Even during the years of accord with Burgundy, English opposition to Henry Tudor continued. After the northern rebellion of spring 1489, Sir John Egremont fled to the Low Countries. There was a continual undercurrent of conspiracy which gave rise to the suspicion that, in spite of the Anglo-Burgundian amity, Margaret was still at the centre of a great web of treachery. The Dowager was known to be well skilled at keeping in touch with those who might be useful to her. She had proven her ability in 1470-71 when she had regularly sent messages to her rebellious brother Clarence when he was in both France and England. She had renewed her various contacts in England at the time of her visit in 1480, and during the reigns of Edward V and Richard III her agent and chaplain visited the country.51 Even after the accession of Henry VII, there was no reason why her messengers should have ceased to move between England and Flanders. She still had close family there, notably her mother the old Duchess Cecily, who was regarded with favour by King Henry. Cecily was not only the Queen’s grandmother, she was also related to Margaret Beaufort, Henry’s mother, hence Edward Hall’s description of Cecily as ‘a woman of small stature but of moche honour and high parentage’.52 In spite of her ‘moche honour’ Henry’s agents seem to have kept a close eye on the activities of her servants and officials.
In Cecily’s will, which was proved in August 1495, her executor was Master Richard Lessey, the Dean of her chapel.53 The old Dowager Duchess of York left Lessey money to help him to ‘bere the charges which he has to pay to the Kinges grace,’ probably for his involvement in a Yorkist conspiracy. With the legacy went an appeal to the King to forgive the debt. Other beneficiaries from the will were Richard’s wife, Jane Lessey, Richard Boyvile and his wife Gresild. Each of these three received very generous bequests of clothing, jewelry and plate as well as a carriage, horses and harness. The Boyviles had been in the service of the Duchess of York for many years and also had close contacts with Margaret. In 1468 Richard Boyvile had accompanied her to Bruges, bringing over hackneys suitable for her use. Later he and his wife were in attendance on the Dowager when she visited England in 1480. They were rewarded by Edward IV for their service to her.54 It is not too far fetched to guess that both Lessey and Boyvile may have acted as agents, organising messengers which passed between the old Duchess of York and her youngest surviving daughter, Margaret.
There were other points of contact through whom Margaret was able to keep in touch with opinion in England. In the various treason trials of Henry VII’s reign, many persons were accused of making contact with the pretenders and exiles in the Low Countries.55 Among those suspected of Yorkist sympathies were many clerics, including John Sant, Abbot of Abingdon, William Richeford, English Provincial of the Dominicans, William Worsley, Dean of St Paul’s and Dr Heusse, Archdeacon of London. According to the testimony of Bernard de Vignôlles, Warbeck had been helped in Kent and in Ireland by the Irish Provincial of the Order of St John and Guillemin de Noion and Daniel Beauvuire were named as messengers between English clerics and the Yorkists in Malines. It was, of course, customary for clerics to travel frequently across the Channel and it is perhaps for this reason alone that so many of them attracted the attention of Henry’s investigators, but the role of the clergy in the plots against Henry VII merits an investigation. Was the famous piety of Cecily and her daughter Margaret more than a mere ‘merchandising with God’?56 Is it possible that there was a real sympathy for the Yorkist cause among some of the clergy? Certainly Cecily, Richard III and Margaret were notably generous and dutiful towards the Church.
There were also many laymen accused of being a part of this Anglo- Burgundian web. They included a number from Ireland who had been involved in the Simnel conspiracy and, like John Waters, were also responsible for introducing Warbeck into that country.57 Within England there were known Yorkist sympathisers such as Edward Franks, the ex-sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, who had been arrested for his part in the Simnel rebellion though he was not executed until 1490, when he was accused of trying to arrange the escape of the Earl of Warwick. The most dangerous group of these sympathisers were highly placed men at court who, probably only as a sort of insurance policy, were resolved to keep in touch with the ‘princes over the water’. Prominent among these was Sir William Stanley, executed in 1495 for his contacts with Warbeck and the rebels in Burgundy.58 For these great men, the support of Maximilian for the Yorkist pretenders was more important than the support of Margaret. This was made clear in the Milanese ambassador’s reports of the conversations between Maximilian and Lord Clifford, who had been sent to the Low Countries by Stanley. Clifford was clearly trying to gauge the extent of Maximilian’s commitment to the Yorkist cause.59
There was also a host of lesser men in England, like Edward Cryer, a hat-maker from Northampton and Henry Mountford, an armourer from Warwick, who had all sorts of lost reasons for putting their trust and hopes on a Yorkist restoration. Some like William Asham, who was tried for his involvement with Warbeck in 1496, had been in attendance on Margaret in 1480. Dichefield, the Governor of Guernsey at the time Warbeck was supposed to have been there in 1486, was commissioned by Margaret to take archers across to Maximilian in 1480. Many men would be stirred by old loyalties and they would be encouraged in their hopes by their knowledge that the rich and powerful Dowager of Burgundy supported their cause.
Although there is no known evidence that the Dowager or her servants had direct contact with these Yorkists in England, Margaret was involved in diplomatic contacts with both Ireland and Scotland during the five years of Anglo-Burgundian harmony. In January 1490, the King of Scotland paid for a herald who travelled between Ireland and Malines and Margaret’s envoys were at the Scottish court in November 1488.60 Was this the beginning of the Warbeck plot? Warbeck later claimed in his confession that he had begun his service with Pregent Meno in 1487 and it was he who had taken him to Ireland. Was Margaret aware of her protégé’s movements as early as this, and was she already preparing the way for him?
Both André and Polydore Vergil suggested that Margaret had originally found and trained the young man herself and André’s source for his assertion may well have been King Henry.61 Brampton’s presence in the Low Countries and the reference to the son of Clarence in the St Rombout’s day accounts may be some evidence in their favour, but the matter still largely depends on the veracity of Warbeck’s confession. While there are some signs that Margaret was informed of the Pretender’s existence when he was in Ireland, there is nothing to substantiate claims that she had created him.
If she did have such early knowledge of the Pretender, her abstinence from any overt efforts on his behalf, between 1487 and 1492, merely reinforces the argument that her policies were never independent from those of Maximilian. While Maximilian and Henry were in such a close alliance, Margaret did not advertise her Yorkist sympathies, and thus it was at the court of France, the enemy of both Burgundy and England, that the career of Richard of York had begun. The new Pretender who had, like Simnel, surfaced in Ireland, was invited to the French court by Charles VIII where he was given all the honours due to a Prince of England. His bodyguard was under the command of the Lord of Concressault and Yorkist sympathisers hastened to join him, one of whom was Sir George.62 Richard was soon in use as a tool of French diplomacy, writing to the King of Scotland to ask him to invade England in alliance with France.63 This was the start of a long diplomatic career for the Pretender, who was to pen his appeals to many of the crowned heads of Europe.
However his stay at the French court was cut short. Before the year was out Henry and Charles had settled their differences at the treaty of Étaples in which Charles promised not to assist Henry’s enemies. In spite of this treaty, Charles did not surrender the young man to Henry and in December the Pretender Richard was allowed to leave Paris and make his way to the Low Countries, where he could count on a warm welcome. Maximilian was displeased by the new Anglo-French accord and by the failure of his own and his daughter’s marriages. Margaret was t
herefore permitted to give her full recognition to her nephew, and he was received as a prince of the royal blood at the ducal court where he became a close companion of the young Duke Philip.
Margaret had last seen her nephew during her visit to England in 1480, when he was seven years old. Now, twelve years later, she claimed in her letter to Queen Isabella of Spain that she had been able to recognise this Richard as her lost nephew miraculously saved from death.64 She went on to explain that she had been told of his existence when he was in Ireland, but had not been able to believe that it was true. She heard of him in France, where he had been recognised by persons who would have known him as well as his own mother. This may be a reference to Sir George Neville who was at the court of King Edward IV. ‘His own mother’, Elizabeth Woodville, died in June 1492 when her Richard was at the French court. The only known picture of this Richard which has survived is a drawing in the museum at Arras,65 which shows a gentle and aristocratic young man with a slight irregularity about the eyes. This impression of him is supported by the description from the Venetian ambassador, who wrote in 1497 that he ‘was not handsome, indeed his left eye rather lacks lustre but he is intelligent and well spoken’.
If Richard was to have any credibility he must have the full support of Margaret, the only member of the House of York beyond Henry’s influence. Margaret’s support seems to have been very sincere, surviving even his capture and confession. It is difficult to understand why she continued to make such an effort on his behalf if she knew all along that he was a fraud. Even Edward Hall and Polydore Vergil allowed that Margaret was convinced that her nephew had been found. Virgil wrote that Margaret received ‘Peter [i.e. Peter Warbeck] … as though he had been revived from the dead … so great was her happiness that the pleasure seemed to have disturbed the balance of her mind’.66 Hall in his usual vigorous way added that Margaret thought ‘to have gotten God by the foote when she had the Devill by the tail’.67
Once more it is Molinet who offers the best insight into the prevailing views of the Burgundian court when he refers to ‘Richard whom it was hoped was the Duke of York’.68 After his capture and the confession, however, Molinet named the young man as ‘Pierreqin Wezebecque’. It would not have been lost on any of his readers with knowledge of Dutch, that the word ‘weze’ means ‘orphan’.
In 1492 the voyage of Christopher Columbus was one of a series of astonishing ventures, some of which were to bring dramatic changes for the whole of Europe. Yet to most of the people living at the time, the quest of Richard of York must have seemed much more likely to succeed than a westerly voyage to the Indies. The Warbeck conspiracy was a very different matter from the earlier rebellions against Henry VII. It was to menace Henry for almost six years and this Pretender obtained wide recognition from the Kings of Denmark and Scotland and from the Princes of the Empire.
Margaret wrote many letters seeking support for her nephew, but only those to Isabella and the Pope have survived.69 Her letter to the Pope was written in 1495 as the preparations for the invasion of England were underway. Her appeal to Isabella dated from two years earlier shortly after the Pretender arrived at Malines, it was also accompanied by a letter from Richard himself.70 They both appealed to Isabella as a cousin (i.e. a descendant of John of Gaunt). They begged her to succour ‘this last sprig of her family’ since Margaret, being ‘a lone widow’, could not furnish him with enough aid to enable him to destroy ‘the usurper’, who had committed such an injury on their family.
In his letter to Isabella, Richard gave an account of his early life which was remarkable for its vagueness. He claimed that when he was ‘nearly nine years old’ he had escaped death. His survival was due only to the mercy of the lord who had been sent to kill him and his older brother. He was smuggled abroad with two men to care for him, one of whom had died and eventually the other returned to England leaving him to fend for himself. After wandering in Portugal he eventually arrived in Ireland, where he had been recognised. This was followed by a period in France, before he finally reached Malines where ‘his dearest aunt’ had ‘because of her virtue and humanity’ received and recognised him.
Throughout this letter there are no names of either people or places. This lack may have been due to the need to protect people who were still within England. There is also a strange error with regard to Richard’s age. The real Richard was born in August 1473, and he would therefore have been nearly ten and not nearly nine in 1483 when the little Princes disappeared into the Tower. It is possible that this was merely a clerical error made by the clerk who translated the letter into Latin, as the Latin of both these letters is rather defective. Neither the Dowager nor Richard would have had much competence in that language. The intention may have been to write that he was still ‘only nine years old’ when he had escaped death but it was translated as ‘barely nine’.
These letters from Dendermonde were given little credence at the Spanish court. Isabella did not reply to the Pretender though she wrote to Margaret assuring her that the whole affair was an imposture.71 The letter from the Pretender was filed in the Spanish offices with the endorsement ‘from Richard who says he is King of England’. The Spanish monarchs reported the whole correspondence to Henry, clearly regarding it as a joke, though Henry Tudor certainly did not.
Nor was the Pretender regarded as a joke in the Low Countries. He received the fullest public support from both Maximilian and Philip, who provided him with an escort of thirty halberdiers dressed in the York livery of mulberry and blue and decorated with white roses. The guard was commanded by Hugh de Melun, a reliable ducal courtier who had fought bravely for Maximilian against Ghent in 1492. Melun was the Governor of Dendermonde and a Knight of the Golden Fleece.72 Richard rode beside Philip on his inaugural visits to Louvain and Antwerp. The visit to Antwerp took place in October 1494 and was made an occasion for Yorkist propaganda in the full view of all the English merchants who were present in the city.73 The two young men doubtless enjoyed the pageants and tableaux which had been organised to entertain them, including the three naked women who posed as the three graces for the ‘pleasure of the people’ as Molinet neatly put it. The Duke of York was attended by his own bodyguard and his arms, proclaiming him as the Prince of Wales, were mounted on the house of the English Merchant Adventurers. This brought protests from the English merchants and led to fighting in the streets between the merchants’ men and the Pretender’s bodyguard.
It was certainly not only ‘for the duchess’ sake’ that ‘all the Flemings exalted Richard’.74 Both Maximilian and Philip gave him every encouragement and there were even rumours that he would be allowed to marry Margaret of Austria. A medal was struck in his honour, on the reverse of which appeared God’s warning to the tyrant Balthazar, a threat to the Tudor King. Nor was this exaltation restricted to the Low Countries. In November 1493 the Pretender was given great prominence at the funeral of Emperor Frederick III in Vienna. There he was recognised as a Prince of the House of York by all the Princes and Bishops of the Empire. Here was a young man who could ride beside the Emperor-Elect Maximilian and dine with princes and who was apparently accepted by them all as the rightful heir to the English crown. This was a very serious threat to the new Tudor dynasty.
All this exaltation of the Pretender should, however, be viewed within its European context. The years 1492 to 1496 were a period of diplomatic turmoil in western Europe. Freed from the menace of an Anglo-Burgundian alliance and secure in Brittany, the French King Charles VIII was now free to strike out in a new direction. In 1494 he embarked on an invasion of Italy. This dramatic development sent the heralds of all the Italian duchies, the Papacy, the Spanish monarchies, Germany and Burgundy rushing to and fro seeking new alliances against France. These diplomatic overtures resulted in the creation of the Holy League. The support of England was important to both sides, and while Spain tried to draw England in through marriage alliances, Maximilian resorted to his old method, so successful in 1487. Either Henry should be fo
rced into an alliance or he would be replaced by a new Yorkist king bound in friendship to the Emperor. It is significant that the Antwerp protocols between Margaret and Richard, the deposition of Richard’s inheritance to Philip and Maximilian and Margaret’s letter to the Pope, all date from late 1494 to early 1495, at the height of this diplomatic activity.75
Henry Tudor had a more myopic view of the European scene. He was not going to commit himself to any alliance against France while he was being threatened by a Pretender and he urged the rulers of Spain and the Italian duchies to put pressure on Maximilian to abandon his protégé. He also took his own measures to deal with the problem and so did other men in England. Less than six months after the Pretender had arrived in Malines, Sir Robert Clifford and Sir William Barley left England, apparently sent by Sir William Stanley, who wanted to make contact with the Pretender.76 Both these men were witnesses to the Antwerp protocols. They later returned to England and were pardoned and even rewarded by the King. It would seem that they were not merely agents for Stanley, but royal agents as well.
Molinet reported that Henry’s spies were sneaking in and out of the Low Countries through Calais and Béthune. They were soon able to name all the English conspirators in Flanders and most of their contacts in England.77 As a result of their reports, a series of treason trials took place in 1494 and 1495 ensuring that most of Richard’s supporters had been rounded up long before he attempted a landing.
Henry’s agents were also instructed to discover the origins of the new Pretender and remarkably they were successful. As early as July 1493, Henry had apparently found out who this Richard really was. In a letter to Talbot he named him as Perkin Warbeck, a native of Tournai in Picardy. A year later he had added the information that he was the son of a boatman. Henry also took active measures to forestall a second invasion of England from Ireland. Sir Edward Poynings was despatched to pacify the Irish and he soon had the whole country under control.
Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Page 24