Perkin
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Richard stayed ten more months in Scotland, living on James’s hospitality. Once his pension resumed it was paid regularly, around the 10th of every month. Yet the king could barely afford to keep him. Ramsay said that James had already turned his chains, plate and ‘cupboards’ into money to finance the raid of September, and fifty-four links of his great chain were sold off the next July and August. The loss of chain, in a prince just as dandified as Richard, underlined how expensive in every way their friendship had become.
They seem to have been together very seldom now. James was living openly with his favourite mistress, Margaret Drummond; Richard was with Katherine. From the payments for stabling his horses, it is clear that the couple were living from early 1497 at the royal hunting lodge at Falkland, in Fife, at the base of the Lomond Hills. Falkland was nearer to Katherine’s family and, in its rural quietness, closer to what she was used to. She and Richard lived there with their own attendants, for Andrew Forman seemed to be back with the king, at least for the time being. James himself, though he liked Falkland, hardly ever visited. In April he passed by on his way to St Andrews, sending a present of ‘apple oranges’ by messenger, and he heard Mass at the palace chapel on the way back. The chapel was dedicated to St Thomas, the doubting disciple, though in the end Thomas had decided to believe.
Falkland was a hidden place, remote from the bustle of court and government. James had rebuilt the west and south ranges, but the palace still had narrow old-fashioned windows, and its scale was small. Water came from an aqueduct laid across the meadows. New gardens with a lawn had been made at the palace, an orchard of pear trees planted and a park laid out where horses and cattle were pastured. Looking north, or west across the orchard that was misted with white blossom in the spring, the view was of deep forest. To the south, the moor-topped Lomonds rose like a wall. There was wonderful hawking there; and little else perhaps, save loving Katherine and watching their tiny son learn to smile and crawl, that Richard felt inclined to do. Yet he may have been staying mostly because he did not know where else to go.
His backers in Europe still kept his argument going, but with increasing difficulty. Margaret, as ever, remained the most committed. The Spanish sovereigns did not doubt, all through 1496, that she was still his chief support in Flanders – despite the new trade pact with England that forbade her to assist him. They ordered Francisco de Rojas, their ambassador there, ‘to try to stop the old duchess favouring York and annoying the king of England’. It is not known whether he tried. In October 1495 Margaret, through her council, had endeavoured to raise 2,000 Rhenish florins from Casius Hacquenay and other Antwerp lenders to pay for more artillery and supplies for her White Rose. This was presumably the shipment that de Lalaing brought in September, though there may have been others.
Even when that help came, the moment was unexpectedly painful. Ramsay happened to observe it:
I stood by when ye King received [de Lalaing] in presence of Perkin; and thus he said in French. ‘Sir, I am coming here according to my promise, to do your Highness service, and for none other man’s sake am I come here, for and I had not had your letters of warrant I had been arrested in Flanders, and put to great trouble for Perkin’s sake’; and he come not near Perkin; and then came Perkin to him, and he saluted him and asked how his Aunt did; and he said ‘Well’; and he inquired if he had any letters from her to him, and he said he durst bring none, but he had to ye King.
De Lalaing would not have called the young man ‘Perkin’, but his other discourtesies sounded plausible enough. He avoided him as if he had the plague and, when pushed by Richard’s courtesy to say something to him, choked out a single word. Any contact with this young man now had to be at arm’s length. It meant, as de Lalaing said, that Margaret no longer dared send him letters directly – although from that January, as Maximilian told Philip, he had been leaving her to carry on all necessary correspondence with him.
The letters de Lalaing brought to James were undoubtedly about Richard’s business. But Margaret’s White Rose still needed and sought her love and direction privately, for himself. This particular correspondence had always been so vital, to him and to her, that his reports on the Deal invasion had been sent to her rather than to Maximilian, as precedence preferred. The studied distance of his most ardent supporter would have been hard to endure. After that rebuff, he seems to have had nothing more to say to the Burgundian captain.
He wrote to her, though carefully and through several intermediate hands. In April 1496 a letter was sent to Margaret at Binche by the hand of a servant of the Duke of Ross, James’s brother, via the duke’s factor at Middelburg. The same servant, Davy Rattrie, an Aberdeen man who generally took salmon and trout to Middleburg and chasubles and chalices back, carried letters to her in April 1497 and again in September. These last were ‘White Rose letters’, perhaps with a slight tang of fish. If Rattrie carried letters back, they were not recorded. But at Binche, sometime between the autumn of 1496 and the summer of 1497, a room below the chapel was renamed ‘Richard’s room’, redecorated with a traverse screen and eight feet of leaded glass, and fitted with a special wooden stand where Margaret placed ‘the candle of virgin wax that was sent to Madame from Rome’. Margaret had never been to Rome, but expressed her devotion to the Holy City by using a guide book to pray the seven stations of the churches there. The holy candle, which enhanced those prayers and the indulgences they earned, was apparently lit now, as if in a shrine, for Richard’s sake.
Maximilian, meanwhile, was persisting doggedly, but against the wishes of almost all the other princes of Europe. The ‘York exception’, which he had written in September 1495 into his agreement to let Henry into the Holy League, had naturally been pounced on, though both Maximilian and the Spanish sovereigns had tried to keep it out of any copy of the treaty that Henry might see. Henry of course knew of it, and refused to join under that condition, and by December the other league members were again beseeching Maximilian to remove the clause. Henry also sent Lord Egremont (‘not a man of much repute, only ten horses with him’, as Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, sniffed in his letter home) to Nördlingen to remonstrate directly. On the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th 1496, Ludovico Bruno read out Maximilian’s reply to the Holy League ambassadors assembled before him. It contained, first,
a justification, purporting that the King of the Romans having no league or relationship with the King of England, the Duke of York, whom he firmly believes to be the son of King Edward, came to him; and that he considered it his duty not to abandon the duke, nor to fail in affording him all just and fitting favour.
A second clause purporting that, should the King of England approve, the King of the Romans offered to negotiate a ten-year truce or peace between him and the said Duke of York;
And thirdly, a paragraph to the effect that, should the King of England be admitted into the league, he was to be bound to attack the King of France next Easter with a strong and powerful fleet.
The ambassadors, especially those of Spain, told Bruno candidly that he could not send Egremont away with such an answer, ‘in the first place, because all the paragraphs about the Duke of York would only irritate the King of England’. The meeting broke up with an apparent promise that Maximilian would concur; but the only solid things Egremont carried back to England were a gold cup and a hundred florins.
During the meeting, Contarini had publicly remarked how desirable it would be if Maximilian were to ‘drop the business of the Duke of York’. The King of the Romans would not consider it. He explained that he could not abandon him for honour’s sake, because he had received him at his court and shown him favour. But he did what he could to immobilise him, within honour’s bounds. In January 1496 he told Philip what he had told the ambassadors: that he wanted Margaret to ‘press York so much’ [pratique et faire tant avec Monsieur d’York] that he would conclude a truce with Henry, ‘for ten years, or as many years as possible’. He had worked out a pension
for Richard, too: 20,000 gold florins a year, which he would ‘do his utmost’ to get the members of the Holy League to pay, assigned as follows:
The pope: 5,000 gold florins
Himself: 5,000
The King of Spain: 5,000
‘The Venetians’: 5,000
Et demeura tousiours ledit d’York en son cuvertur, ‘And the said York will stay under wraps for good.’
At this stage, however, there seemed no need for such a scheme. In February Maximilian received glowing letters from York, newly married, full of hope for the future. What a shame it would be, Maximilian told Contarini, if he were to abandon him now! What a pity if the diplomatic effort to bring Henry into the league impeded the duke’s success! Especially since ‘were the Duke of York to obtain the crown, the King of the Romans and the league might avail themselves of England against the King of France as if the island were their own’.
Contarini, as before, said he thought it would be better if Maximilian ‘left York alone and ended his friendship with him’. Maximilian answered only that he would get a second opinion from his ambassadors as to how well things were truly going with him. If he ever asked, he seemed satisfied. When, in April, Henry sent Sir Christopher Urswick to Augsburg to try and reason with Maximilian, Urswick found a court full of people who supported York and Margaret, especially Bruno, who held particular influence over Maximilian. Urswick added that Maximilian continued to be ill-disposed towards Henry, ‘and keeps up communication with the King of Scotland about the person who is there’. The contact was carefully indirect, but it persisted. Maximilian had no intention of giving up his protégé, not least because, as he told Contarini, ‘the fear that the King of England has of the Duke of York gave greater hope of obtaining what was required from him’. When Urswick was sent home, at the end of May, the York escape-clause remained in the treaty.
Before he dismissed the English envoy, Maximilian discussed with the league’s ambassadors the possibility of negotiating ‘some form of agreement’ between England, Scotland and the Duke of York. He offered to take charge of those talks himself, Zurita said, and had in mind either peace, or a three-year truce. But all the momentum was now on Henry’s side. The King of England joined the league that very month on his own terms of neutrality, without the obligation to go to war with France. As Maximilian gave in, he tried to insist once again on his old exception in the case of ‘the illustrious prince the Duke of York’. Henry seems to have chosen to overlook that condition, as if he knew that Maximilian would not pursue it.
Still the emperor tried, as far as he could, to delay the ratification of Henry’s entry by the other powers. ‘He has always made difficulties,’ explained an Italian envoy in January 1497, ‘owing to his feelings for Richard, the son of King Edward.’ The envoy was writing to the Duke of Ferrara, who, thanks to Maximilian’s ‘feelings’, had no reason to query the claim of Edward’s son to England. Ludovico Sforza, too, was kept neutral, though he begged Maximilian in November for ‘more precise information about the Duke of York, and about how the King of the Romans can support him in a way in which the whole league could co-operate’. The question was awkward, but the prince was by no means dismissed. Although the great powers of Europe, save France, were now ranged on Henry’s side, and the claims advanced by the young man in Scotland looked increasingly hopeless, the name of Richard, Duke of York, remained his in every country – England apart.
Ambassadors thronged the court of Scotland while Richard was there. They did not want to make alliances with him, as a prince might hope. They wanted to buy him. Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, was working to detach him from James by providing ships on which he could seek refuge, and presumably a pension, in Spain. Maximilian’s plans for a pension, in exchange for keeping quiet, had probably been transmitted to him. France offered cash down. Shortly before the invasion of September 1496, Monypeny volunteered to pay James 100,000 crowns for him. Henry, believing this was the only purpose of his journey, had threatened to delay the ambassador a year in England, but Monypeny got past him and made his bid. The object of the bid later told Henry that he had been offered, privately and directly, an ample safe-conduct and a pension of 12,000 francs a year. Ramsay said he could not think what the purpose might be in taking the boy to France, but Charles, James and Henry all knew; Charles could use the threat of him to stop Henry siding with his enemies in the league. James, however, refused the offer.
Pensions and friendship were one thing; but an exiled prince also needed strong public allies, men who could provide money and soldiers and, if necessary, a new base. These were much harder to find. Richard had by now exhausted his welcome in most of the countries of Europe, including the one he called his own. There, the executions and proceedings of 1495 had destroyed what little had existed of a coherent Yorkist party. In general, the English had no interest in him. They wanted peace, law and good government, and believed they enjoyed it under Henry. Richard of York’s brief moment had passed.
Ireland, too, had lost its Yorkist flavour. The Earl of Kildare had gone for good, reinstated as Henry’s deputy in Ireland in August 1496 with an extra sweetener of almost £500 and an undertaking, in particular, to defend the island against any further rebellion by Richard’s main ally, the Earl of Desmond. Anyone found indulging in treasonous activities was also to be sent to Henry. Despite that, Richard seems to have written again from Scotland to Desmond, begging him for help to recover ‘his right in England’. It is not quite clear at what point he wrote, but Desmond (already pardoned in April 1493 and potentially re-pardoned, if he proved himself amenable, in December 1494), had definitively defected in March 1496 and bound himself to Henry. That summer, Henry sent John Ramsay a copy of Desmond’s bond to prove to James, and presumably ‘the boy’, that the boy’s support was fading. Desmond had promised to be a ‘faithful and true liegeman’ to ‘the king my sovereign lord Henry’ and never again to help, receive ‘nor . . . suffer to be received . . . within any town or place being under my power’ any of Henry’s rebels. This time – though James, in Ramsay’s words, ‘will scarcely believe it’ – the earl appeared to mean it.
The search had to go on, therefore, for help from another quarter. Much of Richard’s energy after the September raid may have gone into dictating letters to those he hoped would be, or had remained, his friends. Hence his letter from Edinburgh on October 17th to Bernard de la Forsa, a former ambassador of both Edward IV’s and Richard III’s, now living in Fuenterrabia in Spain. It may well have been typical of others he sent, written in the royal style (‘Right trusty and our right entirely well-beloved’) and sealed, as a king, with the signet Margaret had given him. The purpose of the letter, though well buried, was to wonder about ‘the good heart and mind that our most dear Cousin the King of Spain beareth towards us’. He had not yet tried Spain.
And Spain had not yet tried him, or not with any consistency. Ferdinand and Isabella still publicly mocked him and privately hedged, wondering both how to use him and how to remove him from the picture so that England and Scotland could make peace. If they were to marry their daughter to Henry’s son, as years of negotiations anticipated, they wanted England to be utterly secure both from Scotsmen and Yorkist claimants. In August 1495 they had wondered whether they should get James into the Holy League, ‘to be more certain that he won’t help him of Ireland’, but events had overtaken them. When York fled to Ireland, they exulted that Maximilian had got rid of ‘the joke’ at last; but when it appeared that the joke had perhaps been set at large to find support, and threaten Henry, from elsewhere, they found him less amusing.
Soon after he had devised it (and having extracted a written promise that he would not divulge it to Henry), Maximilian showed his ‘York exception’ to Rojas, the Spanish ambassador. Ferdinand and Isabella took it surprisingly well. Maximilian could not have done anything else, they told de Puebla in London. It would not have been honest of him to behave otherwise, ‘because York has lived in his palace and under
his protection’. (‘York’ again now, not ‘him of Ireland’, and the burla forgotten.) Henry should understand this, and should join the league despite the clause. Even more generously, they offered to be guarantors between Henry and Maximilian for whatever they agreed about York, though Henry was not to be told this. At the end of January 1496, they reassured Henry through de Puebla that Maximilian had inserted the escape clause only to keep York in his debt and to allay his suspicions. He was playing him along, as perhaps he always had.
In June 1496, the Milanese ambassador in Venice picked up a rumour that the Spanish rulers were going to mediate between the Duke of York and the King of England. For six months their letters had given this impression, of a balance between ruler and would-be ruler in which they themselves would make the vital difference. But there was also another scheme afoot. Since late 1495 Ferdinand and Isabella had been under great pressure from Henry to get hold of York themselves and hand him over. The Spanish sovereigns, spurred on by de Puebla, then began to be intrigued by a further refinement of that thought: that they would get York and keep him, thereby both removing a nuisance and driving Henry to the bargaining table.
The idea first surfaced in the autumn of 1495, when neither they nor de Puebla knew where York had gone. His disappearance made him all the more dangerous. ‘As for what you say, that you wish this York might come into our hands,’ they told the ambassador, ‘since we’ve made an agreement with the King of England to help him, it’s certain that if we got hold of York we would help [the king] all we could, please God. And if it’s true what they say, that York is captured, then it’s all over.’