The difference in Henry VII’s behavior with regard to Lambert Simnell and the Pretender indicates his different view of them. With Simnell, he used straightforward and reasonable methods to prove him an imposter, but with the Pretender, his strange behavior suggests that he considered him a viable threat to his throne. An obvious fraud could never have engendered such fear.
Most conveniently for the Tudors, Henry’s captive, Elizabeth Woodville, the mother of the princes, died in 1492 as soon as the news first broke that one of her sons was alive, eliminating any possibility of a definitive verification of his identity. Queen Elizabeth of York might have done so in her mother’s stead, but the Pretender was never allowed to confront any of the princesses who might have been his sisters. Neither did he confront Sir James Tyrell, who Sir Thomas More later claimed had murdered the two princes in the Tower. At the time, very curiously, Tyrell was in Henry VII’s good graces and in charge of the Guisnes garrison.
It is generally accepted that the Tudors were ruthless and had little compunction about eliminating those who stood in their way. Since Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain considered the Pretender to be the Duke of York, they would not have sent their daughter to England without the death of the one they considered the legitimate heir of Edward IV. Henry VII executed Edward, Earl of Warwick, and “Perkin Warbeck” within five days of one another. He aged twenty years in a fortnight as a result and fell so ill he was not expected to live. This has generally been attributed to his execution of young Warwick, but the sin of regicide would have taken a heavy toll, if as suggested, Henry believed the Pretender was the true prince.
In this connection, I must add a few words of explanation regarding the Pretender’s death at Tyburn. Most authorities speak of the Pretender being drawn on a hurdle from the Tower, and others have him walking beside O’Water with a halter around his neck. I plead artistic license in not documenting this last indignity and in depicting him as being taken partway by boat. This unfortunate young man had already endured deplorable degradation, and I felt no need to add more such instances to the reader’s burden.
As a foreigner, the Pretender could not be pardoned his offenses since he didn’t owe Henry VII an oath of fealty. Instead, he was “pardoned of life,” with no paper record needed, like a prisoner of war. Yet he was executed as a traitor at Tyburn. To quote Ms. Moorhen, “It is ironical, or even an indication of King Henry’s true belief of Warbeck’s origins, that he was condemned as a traitor. Warbeck’s confession made him a native of the low countries and, therefore, a subject of the Duke of Burgundy. How could he be considered a ‘traitor’ to the King of England, unless he was born an Englishman?”29
Henry VII’s choice of burial place for the Pretender is also curious. He was said to have been buried in the Austin Friars on Bread Street, but the Austin Friars was reserved for executed nobility. It could be said that there was an error in the records, since the Austin Friars was located on Broad Street, not Bread Street, and it was Bread Street that was meant, not the Austin Friars. There were two churches on Bread Street where commoners were interred: All Hallows and St. Mildred’s, and it would have been strange not to name one of these churches instead of the street. It is specifically the Austin Friars that was mentioned as the Pretender’s place of internment, and that church is on Broad Street, easily confused with Bread Street.
A seventeenth-century chronicler listed all those interred at the Austin Friars before the dissolution of the monasteries, and found no record of the Pretender. Assuming the Pretender was buried at the Austin Friars, why was a boatman’s son buried with nobility, and why was his grave left unmarked? Did Henry VII hope no one would notice that a low-born commoner shared a resting place with nobility if his grave was unmarked? Curiously, neither did Henry VII identify Richard III’s grave at the Grey Friars in Leicester, choosing to leave it unmarked. Thus, a legitimate Yorkist king lay in an unmarked grave in a friary, as did the one who claimed to be a legitimate Yorkist prince.
There is, of course, yet another possible explanation for an unmarked grave. There was a belief among the people of Scotland that their chivalrous king, James IV, brought his friend Prince Richard back to rest in the royal vault at Cambuskenneth Abbey. In the end, any of these interpretations further enhances the idea that the Pretender was the legitimate prince.
“Perkin Warbeck” came to fight for a crown but he came without an army, and he came bringing his family. Either he was astoundingly dim-witted, and so were the crowned heads of Europe who supported him, or he was the genuine prince gambling that all he had to do was show himself to his people and they would know him. An imposter would never have dared what this young man dared. In his courage in coming alone to claim his father’s crown, I find final confirmation that he had to be who he claimed he was.
Mary Shelley makes the following observation: “The various adventures of this unfortunate prince . . . and his alliance with a beautiful and high-born woman, who proved a faithful, loving wife to him, take away the sting from the ignominy which might attach itself to his fate; and make him, we venture to believe, in spite of the contumely later historians have chosen, in the most arbitrary way, to heap upon him . . . a hero to ennoble the pages of a humble tale.”30
Catherine lived to see Sir Thomas More and Queen Anne Boleyn beheaded, and died on October 17, 1537. She was buried at St. Nicholas Church, Fyfield. Her lovely manor house, now a private home, still stands across the yew-tree walk. As noted by Ms. Moorhen, it is indeed strange that two of Lady Catherine’s four husbands were involved in efforts to depose Tudor monarchs. That she believed her husband “Perkin Warbeck” was Richard of York, there seems little doubt. She persuaded her other husbands of it and wore black to the end of her life.
Lullaby on p. 26 adapted from Sir Walter Scott.
“This World, My Prison” quotation for p. 135 is drawn from Ann Wroe’s The Perfect Prince.
Bernard Andre’s scene with King Henry VII and the Pretender’s wife, which was written at the king’s behest, is given verbatim on pp. 170-71.
Select Bibliography
Bacon, Francis. The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh. Edited by F. J. Levy. Indianapolis, New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1972.
Baldwin, David. Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2004.
———. The Lost Prince: The Survival of Richard of York. Stroud, Gloucestershire : Sutton, 2007.
Fields, Bertram. Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.
Gregory, Philippa. The White Queen. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Hammond, P. W., ed. Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law. London: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1986.
———. Richard the Third. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.
Kleyn, D. M. Richard of England. Oxford: Kensal Press, 1990.
MacGibbon, David. Elizabeth Woodville (1437–1492): Her Life and Times. London: Arthur Barker, 1938.
Mackie, R. L. King James IV of Scotland, A Brief Survey of His Life and Times. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1958.
Moorhen, Wendy. “Lady Katherine Gordon: A Genealogical Puzzle.” THE RICARDIAN, vol. XI, no. 139, December 1997, pp. 191–213.
———. “Four Weddings and a Conspiracy: The Life, Times and Loves of Lady Catherine Gordon, Part 1.” THE RICARDIAN, vol. XII, no. 156, March 2002, pp. 394–424.
———. “Four Weddings and a Conspiracy: The Life, Times and Loves of Lady Catherine Gordon, Part 2.” THE RICARDIAN, vol. XII, no. 157, June 2002, pp.446–78.
———. “Four Weddings and a Conspiracy: The Life, Times and Loves of Lady Catherine Gordon, Conclusion.” THE RICARDIAN, vol. XII, no. 158, September 2002, pp. 494–525.
More, Thomas, and Horace Walpole. Richard III: The Great Debate. Edited by Paul Murray Kendall. London: Folio Society, 1965.
Pollard, Anthony James. Richard III: And the Princes in the Tower. Stroud, Gloucestershire
: Sutton, 1991.
Shelley, Mary. The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, A Romance, 1830, reprinted by Kessinger Publishing.
Williamson, Audrey. The Mystery of the Princes: An Investigation into a Supposed Murder. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1981.
Worth, Sandra. The Rose of York: Fall from Grace. Yarnell, Arizona: End Table Books, 2007.
Wroe, Ann. The Perfect Prince: The Mystery of Perkin Warbeck and His Quest for the Throne of England. New York: Random House, 2003.
1 Wendy Moorhen, “Four Weddings and a Conspiracy, Conclusion,” THE RICARDIAN, pp. 494-96.
2 , 3 Wendy Moorhen, “Four Weddings and a Conspiracy, Conclusion,” THE RICARDIAN, p. 498.
3 Ann Wroe, The Perfect Prince: The Mystery of Perkin Warbeck and His Quest for the Throne of England. New York: Random House, 2003, p. 265.
4 Ibid., pp. 254-70.
5 Some of the books listed in the Bibliography are of interest not only for the belief that the younger prince survived, but for alternative theories of what became of him. However, the reader should bear in mind that it is a select Bibliography and far more has been written on the subject than can be included here.
6 Francis Bacon, ed. F. J. Levy, The History of the Reign of King Henry VII, New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, p. 151; and Ann Wroe, The Perfect Prince, p. 397.
7 Wroe, see p. 407, and pp. 412–13. In his letter on October 13, 1497, from custody in Exeter, to Nicaise Werbecque, identified by Henry VII as his “mother,” the Pretender signed himself “Pierrequin Wezbecq.” Wezbecq was a Flemish-French play on words, with the Flemish wezen meaning “real,” and weze meaning “orphan.” To quote Wroe, “This was the orphan Perkin speaking.”
8 Bacon, pp. 152-53.
9 Wroe, p. 59. Rui de Sousa, councilor to the king of Portugal, was besotted by the singing of the seven-year-old prince.
10 Ibid., p. 397. Comment is attributed to Jean Molinet.
11 Ibid., p. 109.
12 Ibid., pp. 392–420.
13 Ibid., pp. 392–93.
14 Ibid., p. 409.
15 Ibid., pp. 417–18.
16 Ibid., p. 419.
17 Ibid., p. 518.
18 A. J. Pollard, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, p. 120, states that the similarities in More’s tale to the story of the Babes in the Wood powerfully suggests a literary rather than a factual inspiration. Pollard is worth reading for a review of the case against Richard III.
19 Bacon, p. 82.
20 See Peter Hammond’s Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law, pp. 104–47. This comprehensive and detailed academic study reexamines the forensic examination of 1934 and the evidence for the deaths of the princes. It is noted that the examiners of 1934 by their own admission presumed throughout the investigation that the bones were male and those of the princes. However, evidence is found to suggest the origin of the bones is likely female. Other finds of “princes’ ” bones prior to the “authentic” find in 1674 are also discussed. Audrey Williamson’s Mystery of the Princes, a Gold Dagger Award winner, offers a compelling and very readable account of the subject and presents a convincing case for the survival of the younger prince, pp. 161–73. Diana Kleyn’s Richard of England, pp. 36–48, discusses the discovery of the other bones at the Tower thought to have been the princes and presents reasons why the bones in the urn could not be theirs. Kleyn also lists further reading on the subject. Bertram Fields offers a clear and insightful analysis in Royal Blood, pp. 238–57. Also see Paul Murray Kendall, Richard the Third, pp. 465–95.
21 Wroe, p. 399.
22 Ibid., p. 397.
23 Mary Shelley, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, A Romance, 1830; reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, p. 3. The documents at the Tower that Mary Shelley refers to have not been mentioned by other sources. They may be waiting to be discovered, or they may have been destroyed, or maybe lost.
24 Sandra Worth, The Rose of York: Fall from Grace, Yarnell, Ariz.: End Table Books, 2007; the third book in a trilogy of three stand-alone novels is a multiple award-winner in its own right.
25 “Conversation with Philippa Gregory,” philippagregory.com, January 2010.
26 Wroe, p.407.
27 Ibid., p.455.
28 Ibid., p. 449. As his biographer notes, the question of why he escaped seemed unanswerable, since he had to know Henry would track him down and kill him.
29 Wendy Moorhen, “Four Weddings and a Conspiracy, Part 1,” THE RICARDIAN, p. 418.
30 Shelley, p. 4.
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