On this day, 1499, Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the English throne, was hanged for treason, bringing an end to one of the most significant threats to Henry VII’s reign. Dr Hannes Kleineke, editor of our House of Commons 1461-1504 section, recounts the story of the Warbeck Conspiracy.
Some three years after Lambert Simnel had taken up his post as Henry VII’s kitchen boy, another claimant to Henry VII’s crown appeared in Ireland. He was initially identified as Edward, earl of Warwick, son of the duke of Clarence, and subsequently as a bastard son of Richard III. Perkin Warbeck denied that he was either. By the end of 1491, he had decided to claim the identity of Richard of Shrewsbury, Edward IV’s younger son.
For a period, this new pretender moved from European court to court: initially, to that of Charles VIII in France, then to that of his purported aunt, Margaret of Burgundy, at Malines in Flanders. At the English court itself, the supposed ‘Edward VI’ attracted a degree of support, and yet, in spite of suspicions and rumours, no invasion or uprising materialised in the spring of 1493.
‘As for the matier beyond See, be ye sure ye may slepe in rest for any trouble that shall be this yere or the next’, as the Norfolk gentleman William Paston reported to a correspondent.
In the first instance, this was indeed so, for Warbeck, attached to the entourage of the Archduke Maximilian, meandered around northwestern Europe, variously recognised as Richard of Shrewsbury by all but the English crown. Even in England, the pretender found support from a substantial number of former servants of the Yorkist royal family.
At the end of June 1495 Warbeck was ready to sail for England. His first intention may have been to land in East Anglia, but in the event his flotilla made landfall at Deal in Kent in the first days of July. It proved a disaster. The pretender was left to watch helpless from his ship as his vanguard of about 300 men was slaughtered by a far superior force brought up from Sandwich. Warbeck sailed for Ireland, but was eventually driven off by the Lord Deputy, Sir Edward Poynings. Whomsoever of his adherents Henry VII could get hold of, were condemned as pirates and unceremoniously hanged. Warbeck himself went into hiding. For two months, his whereabouts are unknown to us, although one man who clearly knew was King James IV of Scotland: on 20 November Warbeck rode into Stirling castle.
James IV seems, if anything, to have been even more completely taken in by Warbeck than his counterparts on the continent. Less than two months after his arrival, the pretender was married to Katherine, daughter of George, earl of Huntly. The importance of this match has been somewhat overstated. Far from being a direct member of the royal family, Katherine was at best a distant relative of the King and more properly only a connexion by several remarriages. Nevertheless, the cogs of European diplomacy continued to turn.
In parallel, English and Scots continued preparations for open war. These dragged on for much of the summer before James IV finally crossed the English border on 21 September 1496. It was at best an inglorious expedition. Over a period of two days James IV’s troops pulled down a number of towers in the border region. Then, within a matter of hours, they pulled back to the safety of Scottish territory.
Henry VII was not to be rushed. Only after the Scots’ withdrawal did he convene a great council which made the financial grant required. In the first place. Money was to be raised in the form of a loan, pending a formal grant to taxation by Parliament, which followed in early 1497. Preparations for the war continued throughout the spring of 1497, but although Henry’s vanguard eventually advanced north, their effort was overtaken by events further south.
Even in February Henry VII’s forced loan of £40,000 was collected in the English shires. This was followed later in the spring by the taxation granted by Parliament – some £120,000. As far as it is possible to tell, it was an excessive tax rating imposed by John Oby, the provost of Glasney college, and tax collector at Penryn in Cornwall, that lit the touch paper. Before too long, Cornwall was in revolt, and the rebels marched east, led by a local blacksmith, Michael Joseph, ‘an Gof’, and a lawyer from a long-established local gentry family, Thomas Flamank. In Devon, they garnered little support. When they reached Exeter the citizens agreed to admit the rebel leaders, but in spite of threats of violence against the mayor, the rebels left the city untouched and instead marched on into Somerset.
Here, they found extensive support, restricted not merely to the county and its towns, but also into Wiltshire and Hampshire. Here, also, they acquired a noble leader in James Tuchet, lord Audley. Audley’s motives in joining the rebels are hard to fathom, but it has been suggested that a resentment of the royal preferment of John, Lord Cheyne, was to blame. From the cathedral city of Wells, the rebels wrote to Warbeck in Scotland, inviting him to join, and indeed lead their cause. Then, the rebels split their army in two: one, lead by an Gof marched via Winchester towards Guildford, while the other, under Lord Audey, took a more northerly route via Wallingford to London.
At Ewelme, the King’s messengers located Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. In fact, they found him in bed. Or to be precise, sharing a bed with Lord Abergavenny, who hid from the messengers under the covers. De la Pole responded to the King’s orders to protect Staines Bridge with alacrity, and rode to join the army, but not before he had immobilised Abergavenny by taking his shoes.
The rebellion was brought to an end at Blackheath where the rebels were crushed by the King’s army. Many of the rebels nevertheless got away, and this – if indeed he had heard news of Blackheath – may have motivated Warbeck, who set sail on 6 July. Whether intentionally or as a result of stormy weather, he was initially driven to Ireland, but found a Spanish ship to take him to Cornwall. This, however, was intercepted by an English vessel. Informed by the English captain of Prince Arthur’s recent betrothal to Catherine of Aragon, the Spanish sailors were charged on their loyalty to give up Perkin Warbeck if they had him on board. The Spanish master kept a straight face and swore that he had never even heard of such a person: Warbeck, for his part, lay huddled up in an empty wine barrel in the ship’s prow. On 7 September, the ship landed at Whitesand Bay near Land’s End.
Warbeck’s own following had shrunk from its original size to barely 300 men, but his English sponsors were able to raise fresh troops, so it was at the head of some 3,000 armed followers that the pretender marched on Exeter. Initial developments seemed promising: when the sheriff of Cornwall raised the posse comitatus and attacked the rebel camp at Castle Kynnock near Bodmin the majority of his men deserted and joined the pretender. Similarly, the earl of Devon who had arrayed his retinue was forced to retreat into the walled city of Exeter before the approaching rebels.
Warbeck’s army, purportedly swollen to some 8,000 men, now marched on Exeter and laid siege to the city. On 17 September, attacked on the east and north gates were beaten back. The rebels renewed their attack on the following day. The earl of Devon and his son were caught asleep, and the assailants managed to batter their way into the city. But the earl of Devon and the citizens rallied, and the steep incline of the high street from the Exe bridge probably playing its part in driving back the attackers. Neither side could claim a victory, but a truce was agreed, under the terms of which the rebels would continue on their march east, if the earl of Devon would promise not to pursue them.
So the rebels marched on, and on 19 September 1497 reached Taunton. Here, they remained for two days executing a variety of military manoeuvres, but it was clear that the game was up. A royal army was approaching from the east, and behind them the earl of Devon, whatever he had previously promised, was bringing up his men in their rear. In the face of this, Warbeck and a small group of confidants fled from Taunton in the middle of the night.
For a day and a half Warbeck and his last few followers galloped through the English countryside until they reached the sanctuary of Beaulieu abbey. Here, Henry VII’s men caught up with them, and in return for their lives, they agreed to surrender to the King. In the first instance, Henry VII showed himself gracious. He kept the pretender in his entourage, and subsequently at his court, although he periodically exposed him to the scorn of the Londoners. Yet, within a year Warbeck attempted to escape. This, Henry could not allow. Warbeck was consequently confined in the Tower in chains: his public exposure – in the stocks on a scaffold of empty wine barrels – became more taxing. And yet, he also became a target for fresh treason against Henry VII’s rule.
This time, the King had had enough. On 16 November 1499 Warbeck was put on trial in the palace of Westminster’s White Hall. The predictable sentence was that he should suffer the customary penalties of treason. Yet, apparently public opinion had preserved some affection for the pretender and opposed this gruesome punishment. So, on 23 November, Warbeck was led through the streets of London, a halter around his neck, and hanged on a small scaffold erected for this purpose at Tyburn. The Warbeck conspiracy was at an end.
H.W.K.
Further Reading:
Ian Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy (Stroud, 1994)
