Claimants to Royalty

by John Henry Ingram

In 1491 this new aspirant to the crown began to noise his pretensions abroad, proclaiming himself to be Richard, the younger of the two sons of the deceased King Edward, who were supposed to have been murdered in the Tower by order of their uncle, the late King Richard the Third. This young claimant, admitted to have been a youth of noble aspect, and in features much resembling the late Edward the Fourth, whilst acknowledging that his elder brother had been killed, asserted that he had been permitted to escape. In a letter, which is now in the British Museum, and which the youth wrote to Isabella of Spain, he states that at the time his brother was murdered he was nine years of age; that he was sent out of England secretly, in the custody of two persons, and was compelled to take an oath that he would not divulge his name and rank to any one until after a certain number of years. Having fulfilled the conditions of his promise, he left Portugal, where he had resided for some time, and in 1492 landed in Ireland. The citizens of Cork, which was the first city he honoured with a visit, undeterred by the exposure of the late pretender to royalty, were for warmly espousing the cause of this claimant, yet were somewhat restrained by the prudence of the new Earl of Kildare. At this critical moment Charles, King of France, being at war with Henry the Seventh, sent a cordial invitation to the soi disant prince to come to Paris. The invitation was readily accepted, and the pretender once more crossed the seas. In France he was received everywhere with royal honours, and treated by everybody as the Duke of York, heir to the English crown. This courtesy was, however, as Bacon points out, doubtless only trickery on the part of the French king in order to force Henry into a peace. A treaty was speedily concluded between the two monarchs, one result of which was the dismissal of the young adventurer, King Charles refusing, nevertheless, to deliver up his youthful guest to the English king's untender mercies.

Forced to forsake France, the pretender betook himself to the Court of Burgundy, where the old Duchess, whose nephew he claimed to be, protected and assisted all adherents of the House of York. The old Duchess Margaret, sister of Edward the Fourth, had long asserted her belief in the existence of one of her nephews, and was only too likely to acknowledge any presentable claimant; but the support which she had rendered Simnel in his recent exploit did not tell in favour of her present protégé. Upon this occasion she was, or pretended to be, very searching in her scrutiny into the adventurer's story, but, at last, appearing to be perfectly convinced of the justice of his claims to kinship, she recognized him as her nephew; embraced him affectionately; styled him "The White Rose of England;" appointed him a guard of thirty persons, and furnished him with everything suitable for the maintenance of his presumed princely rank. The lad, indeed, is universally admitted to have displayed in all his conduct a noble bearing, and if he were, as Henry's partisans assert, only a wandering trader's son, he certainly did credit to the alleged secret instructions of his putative aunt.

Lord Verulam, to account for the likeness between the young pretender and the late King Edward, as also to explain his courtly bearing and princely deportment, tells a strange and extremely improbable story, to the effect that the lad was son of a converted Jew, named variously John, and Peter, Osbeck, a resident of Tournay, but whom business brought to London. This Osbeck resided in London for some time, having with him his wife, who, during the period of their residence in the English metropolis, was confined of a boy. Osbeck, says Bacon, "being known in Court, the King, either out of a religious nobleness, because he" (the father) "was a convert, or upon some private acquaintance, did him the honour to be godfather to his child," and, it is to be presumed, endowed him with regal inclinations. This needless legend is set in contrast with another in the next page, wherein the chronicler, forgetting the "religious nobleness" of the licentious monarch, subjoins that it was said, "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 it might give occasion to the boy, in being called 'King Edward's godson,' or, perhaps in sport, 'King Edward's son,' to entertain such thoughts in his head. For tutor he had none (for aught that appears), as Lambert Simnel had, until he came unto the Lady Margaret, who instructed him."

The advocate for the crafty, avaricious, old Tudor king, next indulges in a lengthy and apparently imaginative account of the secret tuition of the comely lad by the Duchess of Burgundy, with whose innermost thoughts Bacon professes the closest acquaintanceship. He shrewdly guesses that "Perkin Warbeck" had counterfeited for so long a time the person of the murdered prince, that at last, "with oft telling a lie, he was turned by habit almost into the thing he seemed to be, and from a liar to a believer." Be this as it may, the soi disant Richard, comfortably installed at the Court of Flanders, speedily discovered means of opening communications with England. Many members of the highest families, including, so it was alleged, Sir William Stanley, a relative of the King, and who had even saved Henry's life and crown at Bosworth, were involved in a plot, having for its object the overthrow of the reigning monarch, and, apparently, the substitution for him of the Burgundian protégé. Henry was well provided with spies, who kept him closely informed of all that was brewing; but his efforts to obtain possession of "le garson," as he termed the claimant, were unavailable; whilst all his declarations that he was perfectly at his ease with respect to the "impostor, as every one knew who and what he was," only served to display his anxiety.

By means of the King's gold, the whole of the conspiracy on foot was revealed: Sir Robert Clifford, one of the conspirators, betrayed his companions for five hundred pounds and a free pardon, and two other accomplices for sums proportionate to their lower rank. The whole details of the plot were unravelled, and the chief members of it, including Stanley, were brought to the block. Stanley's complicity in the "Perkin Warbeck" conspiracy has been doubted by modern historians, who have not hesitated to aver that his wealth was his principal crime in the King's eyes; indeed, the only charge that was made against him was, that if he were sure the claimant was King Edward's son, he would not bear arms against him.

The discovery of the plot, and the fate of its principal concocters, appeared to be a death-blow to the young adventurer's cause; but he, all undaunted, taking advantage of Henry's absence in the north, with the aid of the Duchess of Burgundy fitted out an expedition, and tried to effect a rising in England. Some portion of his followers landed at Deal, but instead of obtaining assistance were attacked by the Kentish men, and either killed at once or made prisoners, and subsequently hanged. Discouraged by this hostile reception, "Perkin" returned to Flanders, whence he shortly betook himself once more to Ireland. There he again failed to arouse the populace on his behalf, although joined by Desmond and some others of less note. "As," says Bacon, "there was nothing left for Perkin but the blustering affection of wild and naked people," and as he had lost three of his vessels in a futile attempt to capture Waterford, he had to relinquish his efforts in that quarter.

Again repelled in his efforts to obtain a footing in Ireland, the intrepid wanderer crossed over to Scotland, to the warlike monarch of which country he carried recommendatory letters not only from the Duchess of Burgundy, but also from the French King and the Emperor of Germany. By the Scottish King the presumed prince was received with open arms, and in every way treated as if he were the personage he claimed to be. There is every reason for believing that James credited his guest's story; outwardly, at least, he paid him all deference; addressed him as "cousin," and gave him for wife his own relative, the beautiful Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntley, and granddaughter of James the First of Scotland. It seems very unlikely that the Scottish monarch would have sanctioned the marriage of Lady Catherine with the adventurer unless convinced of his royal birth.

Under the pretext of assisting his youthful guest to regain his dominions, James headed two warlike incursions into England. Unable to resist so good an opportunity of looting, the Scottish army carried off everything of value; and when the young adventurer, according to Polydore Vergil, the historian, "feigning" to be distressed at the devastation inflicted, implored the King to spare his miserable subjects, James replied, sneeringly, that it was very generous to be so careful of what did not belong to him, as not a man had yet joined his standard. No one, indeed, of any consequence did join the claimant upon these occasions; and as the raids proved disastrous to the Scottish forces, Henry was enabled to make peace on his own terms with James; offered him his eldest daughter, Margaret, in marriage, and forced him to withdraw his protection from Perkin.

Compelled once more to resume his search for an asylum, the luckless pretender, accompanied by his beautiful wife and a few faithful followers, left Scotland; not, however, without bearing away with him some substantial proof of the Scottish King's regard. Again he sought shelter in Ireland, but the Irish appearing less disposed than before to espouse his cause, he departed for Cornwall, where much discontent prevailed on account of Henry's oppressive taxation. With only three vessels and seventy men the claimant landed at Whitsand Bay, near Land's End, on the 7th September, 1497. He sent his wife to St. Michael's Mount for safety; and then, at the head of an irregular body of three thousand men, whom he had got together by liberal promises, he marched on Exeter, to which city he laid siege, in compliance with the advice of his adherents that he should endeavour to make himself master of some walled town. He sent a demand to the citizens to surrender to him, but as he had no artillery to enforce his claims, his assumed title of Richard the Fourth, King of England, inspired little reverence, and after some unsuccessful assaults he was compelled to raise the siege and hastily retire to Taunton. Seeing clearly how utterly incompetent his undisciplined forces were to compete with the veteran troops Henry was sending against him, he forsook them in the night, and, accompanied by several of his principal followers, fled to the monastery of Beaulieu, in the New Forest, and there claimed sanctuary. His followers, left without a leader, surrendered without an effort; a number of them were hanged, and the rest heavily fined.

Not daring to violate the privileges of a sanctuary, Henry had the Beaulieu Monastery securely guarded; the meanwhile he contrived to obtain possession of the Lady Catherine Gordon, mightily afraid that she might give birth to a child, in which case, as Bacon shrewdly remarks, "the business would not have ended in Perkin's person." The politic king received the royal lady kindly, and sent her to the queen; awarded her "honourable allowance for the support of her estate, which she enjoyed both during the king's life and many years after."