The War of the Roses

by Timothy Venning

  (a) The plots of 1492–5

  The thorny question of Warbeck’s real identity is less important than the perceived ‘fact’ that he could have been Prince Richard, as accepted by a number of the new King’s courtiers in the early to mid 1490s, and there was no way of proving that he was not the Prince without producing the latter’s body. There may have been secret searches of the Tower of London for the missing boys’ remains, but if so they were unsuccessful; nor did the alleged murderer who ‘confessed’ in 1502, Sir James Tyrrell, oblige Henry by giving details of where to look or at least provide a coherent anonymous story of Ricardian villainy that could be circulated. For that matter, if Sir Thomas More was able to state in c. 1510 that at least one of the alleged killers was still at large (presumably in London) and could end up hanged for his (further?) crimes it should not have been beyond Henry’s intelligence service’s resources to track the man down in the early-mid 1490s and force him to confess.84 A confession would seem ‘forced’ and might not be believed –but the same could apply to Warbeck’s confession. As Henry had not even specifically named Richard III as the killer in 1485–6 or held a Requiem Mass for his ‘late’ brothers-in-law it would seem that he had little idea what had happened and preferred to avoid stirring up more debate by poking around in the mystery when he could not produce answers. There was one odd incident in spring 1495 when Henry’s Captain of the Guard, visiting Duchess Margaret and meeting Warbeck, blustered that the real Prince was dead and he could show anyone the chapel where he was buried (possibly one of the two in the Tower); but in that case why had Henry not revealed this ‘fact’ and held a public memorial service? The most useful time to publicize a confession to regicide by Tyrrell (or someone else) was while Warbeck the ‘fake Prince’ was still at large, not 1502 when he was safely dead–and even in 1502 Henry only apparently showed Tyrrell’s account around the court and it was not printed.85 But this gave Warbeck a major advantage throughout his period at liberty, and his backers made the most of it. Notoriously, even Henry’s stepfather’s brother, Lord Chamberlain Sir William Stanley, apparently seriously considered that Warbeck might be genuine in 1494–5 and pledged that he could–or would?–support him.86 This was ‘treason’ at the very heart of the court, or at least chronic insecurity by ‘fence-sitting’ nobles fearing another invasion, and its committers could even argue that as Titulus Regius had been repealed Prince Richard was the rightful king so it was not treason. The belief that Warbeck could be genuine extended widely across the senior ranks of society, according to Polydore Vergil87–and this sort of commitment could have had a ‘snowball effect’.

  Believing that Warbeck could be the rightful king was not the same thing as actively plotting his ‘restoration’, and a question mark remains over how dangerous the actual ‘plot’ of 1494–5 was. As named in the later ‘official’ version of events, the plotters at court included Stanley, his brother-in-law Sir Humphrey Strange, Steward of the Household Lord Fitzwalter, and Sir Giles Debenham. The crucial evidence to arrest the activists was provided by Sir Robert Clifford, son of a Lancastrian peer killed in the second battle of St Albans in 1460 and a veteran of Stoke in 1487; he apparently masterminded the initial grouping of conspirators in spring 1493 and then crossed over to Flanders with his father-in-law, William Barley, to contact Duchess Margaret at Malines.88 He then took up residence at Warbeck’s ‘court’, where the leading Yorkist figures were the shady John Taylor and John Atwater who had masterminded (or just taken advantage of?) Warbeck’s first appearance at Cork in 1491. Duchess Margaret wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to assure them that he was genuine.89 It seems that Henry expected an invasion of England in summer 1493 as he set up his headquarters at Kenilworth and put a watch on the coasts as in 1487, but none materialized; Maximilian had other priorities across central Europe, and his father Emperor Frederick (aged 78) was to die that autumn so logically he was waiting to secure his succession to the latter’s title and lands before acting. He invited Warbeck to Vienna–as ‘Richard IV’–for the funeral, but only arrived in person in the Low Countries with his guest in summer 1494. There, Maximilian’s son and heir Philip was invested as the local Duke of Brabant in October, with Warbeck in attendance–a shield was put up in public proclaiming his heraldic arms as King of England but was pulled down by Henry’s supporters, leading to scuffles.90 Crucially, no invasion took place, although Charles VIII offered Warbeck ships too91–the first time that both France and the Empire were simultaneously hostile to England, though (as in the next case of this in 1538) they were unlikely to co-ordinate an invasion.

  Crucially, at the end of 1494 Henry’s agents persuaded Sir Robert Clifford to defect back to England via Calais. He allegedly provided ‘proof’ that Warbeck was a fake, and a vital list of the pretender’s court and Church sympathizers.92 They were supposed to be planning the assassinate the King, how effectively is impossible to judge. Arrests followed early in 1495, an impressive list including not only Stanley and Lord Fitzwalter but a number of top Churchmen–Dean Worsley of St Paul’s Cathedral, Friar William Richford the leader (‘Provincial’) of the Dominican Order in England, another senior Dominican friar (the Prior of King’s Langley, Hertfordshire), John Kendall the Prior of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, and William Sutton (priest at St Stephen’s Wallbrook in London, a famous preacher). Dr William Hussey, Archdeacon of London, and James Keating (prior of Kilmainham and head of the Knights of St John in Ireland) were also involved, and possibly Bishop Thomas Langton of Winchester. Kendall was the most dangerous of them, as a senior figure in a semi-autonomous Knightly Order who handled their funds and correspondence across Europe and could use both to benefit Warbeck. He was also on Henry’s Council and ironically helped to negotiate the Anglo-French treaty in 1492, which removed Warbeck’s first foreign patron–and unlike with Stanley, there is evidence of his active ill-will towards the King. According to the 1496 confession of his agent Bernard de Vignolles, during a trip to Rome in 1492 Kendall (who could travel abroad on Order business without arousing Tudor suspicion) asked him to hire a poisoner to murder the King and his family, and a bizarre episode resulted with an astrologer promising him a box of poisonous ointment, which he could smear on a doorpost in Henry’s apartments and so incite anyone who came into contact with it (smell or touch?) to regicide. It was allegedly so toxic that exposing it to open air was dangerous to its carrier, so the question of how safe its user would be helped to put de Vignolles off and he threw it away and substituted a fake.93 Assuming the whole episode was not invented, it indicates Kendall’s determination to be rid of the King if not his commonsense; and his network of Hospitaller links made him very useful to avoid detection.

  Laymen included Thomas Cressener, son of a relative and legatee of Edward IV’s elderly mother Duchess Cecily of York, and two of the Brampton family who lived near her residence at Berkhamsted Castle–also close to the priory at King’s Langley. William Daubeny, clerk of the Jewel House, and Warwickshire military veteran Sir Simon Mountford of Coleshill (who sent £30 via his son to Warbeck) took part too. Sir Thomas Thwaites, treasurer of the garrison at Calais (and former Chancellor of the Exchequer to Edward IV) and military official Sir Robert Radcliffe represented a dangerous ‘Yorkist cell’ at Calais. In these circumstances, Henry’s choice of the secure Tower of London for his residence over Christmas 1494 and New Year 1495 was clearly not only to enable him to be on hand to interrogate suspects. Stanley ended up executed for treason on 16 February after a round of executions of the lesser lay suspects, the clergy escaping this fate by reason of legal immunity. But Fitzwalter was not sentenced until the autumn, was reprieved and deported to prison at Calais, and was finally executed in 1496 for plotting to escape.94

  The extent and identities of the conspirators made the plot sound like a serious threat and it was portrayed as such, though it should be remembered that no attempt at a coup by regicide and domestic revolt succeeded in medieval or Tudor England. A plot plus foreign invas
ion would have been far more dangerous, and to that extent Henry was lucky in that 1494 had seen Charles VIII of France take his army off to Italy to overrun both assorted North Italian states (principally Milan) and then the distant Kingdom of Naples. He and his geo-strategic rival Maximilian were thus otherwise preoccupied at the time of maximum danger for England, and the new Emperor could not follow up his provocative parading of ‘Richard IV’ in Flanders in autumn 1494 with an expedition to aid him, though he apparently asked the rulers of Saxony to provide troops. Duchess Margaret promised an expedition for February 1495, which never materialized.

  When did the possibility of English aid to an invasion become serious? This mattered more than the apparent flood of letters that Warbeck received from minor gentry and ex-soldiers promising to help him as their late King’s son.95 Whether the full list of plotters arraigned in January 1495 had been ready for action and properly co-ordinated back in 1493 too is unknown. According to Clifford’s later testimony it was in January 1493 that he first discussed Warbeck with Lord Fitzwater (who promised to raise 500 men to fight for him) and in March that he first discussed him with the sympathetic Sir William Stanley.96 At what date this trio and Kendall’s ‘ecclesiastical’ group of plotters linked up is unclear. But it is significant that Henry’s intelligencers were ‘on top of’ Yorkist activity in London well before the arrests, as well as managing to investigate ‘Prince Richard’s background enough in Flanders for Henry to name his ‘real’ identity as Warbeck the boatman’s son that summer.97 In February 1493 London plotters Humphrey Savage (coincidentally or not, Stanley’s nephew) and Sir Gilbert Debenham had to flee into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where they were kept under surveillance, and executions of unknown persons for treason followed that summer; another London Yorkist group who pinned up inflammatory pamphlets on church doors in February 1494 were quickly identified, chased into sanctuary at St Martin’s-le-Grand, dragged out by the King’s men, and tried and executed.98 Dean Worsley, Richford, Fitzwater, Radcliffe, Daubeny, Mountford, Thwaites, and Cressener were all in custody well before the arrests of January 1495. The crucial moment may have been when, according to French chronicler Molinet, three double-agent ‘Tudor defectors’ who had secured places in Warbeck’s entourage persuaded a large group of senior English figures to send letters under their personal seals to the ‘Prince’, then seized the evidence and defected back to England with it. (The Calais records show that these men travelled back to England in October 1494.99) They were followed in December by Clifford himself, according to Polydore Vergil of his own free will after months of bribes and threats from Henry’s agents.100 Some analysts think that Clifford had been a double agent all along; he was given an official pardon on 22 December, soon after he landed, but was still being escorted around by Henry’s close henchman Bray as a ‘prisoner’ in January (to cover up his defection or because he could not be trusted?).101 Given all that Clifford knew, this question is important–if he was a Tudor agent all along, the King was in less danger of overthrow as Clifford should have been able to alert him of any planned immanent coup or invasion. It is, however, apparent that Warbeck kept ‘open house’ for defectors at his ‘court’ at Malines in 1493–4 and does not seem to have been cautious in keeping secrets to a few close and trustable allies, so the chances of Henry discovering who his court sympathizers were in time were always high.

  (b) Invasions, 1496–7

  The first armed incursion by Warbeck’s motley fleet finally occurred in July 1495, over four months late; in the interim his patron Maximilian had failed to interest the Imperial Diet in loaning the expedition money to replace the hostile Henry VII with a pro-German Yorkist king. There was minimal support to be expected in England due to the arrests, though if Stanley and other senior lay figures had been at liberty undetected they might have been able to meet the rebels as they landed or raised a diversionary attack elsewhere. The only major plotter still at liberty, in the south-east Midlands, was Kendall who appears to have been equipping his tenants ready to fight but not to have done more.102 Leaving Flushing in Holland on 2 July, Warbeck’s expedition arrived offshore at Deal next day; around 300 men landed to erect ‘Richard IV’s banner and were assured of support by the locals. The latter invited their new king ashore, but he wisely stayed on his ship and a short time later armed loyalists who had evidently been waiting for him emerged to ambush the invaders. About half of them were killed; those who were taken captive were swiftly tried and executed, and Warbeck had no option but to head for more promising territory.103 The Kentishmen had been notorious for pro-Yorkist revolts since 1450 and had taken part in seemingly desperate (and unsuccessful) attacks on London in 1471 and 1483, but were apparently wary of involvement this time. Henry–away at Worcester so not expecting the attack to come then or there–wrote that he had not even needed to use his troops and the Kentishmen had spontaneously showed their loyalty, though the delay in attacking the landing party may indicate hesitation and ‘prodding’ from loyal gentry as one commentator claimed.104 Once the attack had been driven off, it would have disheartened any hesitating partisans in England; it also seems that Maximilian’s son Philip, as governor of Flanders, washed his hands of the rebels and by the autumn even Maximilian was considering an anti-French international alliance that would include Henry as a member (with a ‘get-out’ clause just in case Warbeck won).105 Warbeck, shadowed by royal ships so he could not land in Devon or Cornwall away from immediate Tudor military reprisal, sailed on to Southern Ireland and joined his old ally the Earl of Desmond for an attack on Waterford. He had the backing of Cork, thanks to his ally Atwater, and assorted magnates including the northerners O’Neill of Clandeboye and O’Donnell, but the central government in Dublin had been strengthened by new Lord Lieutenant Sir Edward Poynings in 1494 so a repeat of Simnel’s triumphant takeover in 1487 was not on the cards. Instead of marching on Dublin and forcing Kildare to choose sides he wasted nearly two weeks besieging the strongly-walled Waterford, was driven off and lost some of his ships, and wandered around western-central Ireland with his supporters to no good purpose for several months.106 In November he arrived in Scotland to a warmer welcome from King James IV and was recognized as king and given a high-born wife, Lady Katherine Gordon, but the resulting invasion of Northumberland in September 1496 was another fiasco. Quite apart from it arousing local antagonism to a pretender now seen as a puppet of the traditional enemy and leading to Warbeck complaining at the terrorizing of his ‘subjects’, all it achieved was the usual burning, raping, and looting over a small area plus the sack of Heton Castle by King James. The Scots were only in England for four days,107 and after their return home Warbeck stayed inactive at his host’s court for the best part of a year. He had been stymied in Ireland and had no obvious hope of a rising in England, but it should have been clear that James was of no practical military use to him; presumably the thrill of actually being treated as an honoured fellow-sovereign at a hospitable court made him unwilling to move on and go back to Desmond’s lands around Cork or to Flanders. In either location he would have been closer to any unexpected revolt in England–though in Flanders he would probably have had difficulty in getting a ship or any troops out of Duke Philip for any more adventures. As events were to show, he was to miss his best chance of leading a large army on London by his staying in Scotland, well away from southern England.

  The most serious revolt to shake Henry VII’s throne since 1497 was ironically not a Yorkist conspiracy but a ‘bona fide’ popular uprising in the tradition of the revolts of 1381 and 1450, seemingly unplanned, unpredicted, sparked off by a particular local incident, and reflecting the underlying grievances of people with no particular adherence to a rival candidate to the throne. Unlike in 1381 or 1450 there was no background of recent ‘misrule’, fiscal oppression, social unrest, or favouritism at court to explain it, and it was made more complicated than the more usual outbursts nearer London by being centred in a notoriously independent-minded county far from Lond
on–Cornwall. The area had a distinct ethnic and cultural identity as a centre of surviving Romano-British society during the Anglo-Saxon ‘conquest’, having been part of the ancient British kingdom of Dumnonia and survived under its own non-Saxon kings until conquest by the West Saxon king Egbert in 825 and final annexation by Athelstan in the 920s. It still remained a separate ‘duchy’ with its own legal and administrative institutions, the title of Duke having been held by the Prince of Wales since the fourteenth century, and the fiercely autonomist Cornish tin-mining communities were largely self-governed by their own body, the ‘Stannaries’, under a royally-appointed ‘Lord Warden’. It also had its own language and distinct customs, and was so far from London that it could be as promising as Northumberland as a centre for revolt if the local gentry chose to act–as Yorkist Sir Henry Bodrugan had been intending in 1486–7 until he was forced to flee. It had not been particularly involved in the struggles for the Crown since 1453 apart from a half-hearted rising in favour of Henry Tudor against the usurping Richard III in autumn 1483 and the Bodrugan plot–though the support for Henry (unknown locally) may well have indicated indignation at the usurpation and a desire for ‘justice’. Now, however, a revolt broke out in summer 1497 due to resentment at the high level of taxes demanded in the January 1497 Parliament to pay for the King’s war in faraway Scotland–apparently the opinion was that the war was nothing to do with the Cornish.108 The Scots did not threaten them so they should not have to pay for it. There was a parallel with the ‘poll tax’ revolt of 1381, with ‘unjust’ financial demands from London as the background to popular violence directed at the court. As with the Wat Tyler revolt in Kent in 1381, a local incident sparked off a wider revolt–Michael Gof, a blacksmith at the village of St Keverne on the isolated Lizard peninsula, killed a visiting tax collector and an angry gathering of locals demanding the repeal of the war-taxes followed. Once the King’s men had been attacked, retribution and executions could be expected so the chances of the fearful protesters taking things further and seeking outside support was high; a riot could thus ‘snowball’ into a formidable protest, which in the absence of modern law-enforcement methods could outnumber the men who the local sheriff and gentry could collect to stop them. A lawyer who could articulate the popular demands in legal terms, Thomas Flamank, took charge of the demonstration and persuaded the rioters that they should march on the county capital, Bodmin, and more villagers joined them en route. The gentry who would normally have acted to halt such protests seem to have been taken by surprise by the size of the crowds and no doubt feared that their servants and tenants would sooner desert than fight the protesters. As a result the ‘army’ of around 15,000 of the ‘commons’ were able to decide to march on London and did so without hindrance. They had no obvious leaders apart from Flamank and Joseph, although they soon persuaded one local peer–James Touchet, Lord Audley, son of Richard III’s Treasurer–to join them. Despite Touchet’s probable Yorkism they had no apparent dynastic agenda to remove the King, though antipathy was expressed to ministers such as Cardinal Morton; the rebellion was thus in line with 1381 and 1450. Noticeably, there was no move made to intercept them by loyal nobles in the counties en route, though more local volunteers protesting at the King’s taxes joined them.109 Instead, the King’s senior commander, Lord Daubeny, hurried back from Newcastle with his army to London. It was later wondered why he had not marched out to intercept the rebels before they reached the vicinity. Was this just caution as he had to rest his men and had little information on the rebels’ capacity, or was it potential treason?110 Henry was supposed to have been annoyed at the delay.The rebels did not head directly to the capital but swerved away east to Blackheath in western Kent, probably in the hope of attracting support from that notoriously restless county. Blackheath was also the scene of the Duke of York’s encampment as he challenged Henry VI’s government in 1452, and was a ‘high-profile’ and well-known site, close to London, for sympathizers from south-east England or the capital to assemble to join the rebellion. Probably the leadership expected to be invited into the City by a spontaneous rising there, which would overwhelm the King’s men, as had occurred in 1381 and 1450; though unlike then the government was headed by a determined adult monarch with no compunction about drastic measures.