Henry: Virtuous Prince. David Starkey

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       DUKE OF YORK

      IN NOVEMBER 1491 A YOUNG, French-speaking Fleming called Perkin Warbeck had an awkward confrontation with a group of townsmen in Cork, the major port on the south coast of Ireland. Not surprisingly, for he cut an exotic figure. Most people then, men and women alike, wore thick, drab, serviceable woollens. But Warbeck was clad from head to foot in shimmering silk. The clothes were not his own, but belonged to his master, a Breton merchant called Pregent Meno. Warbeck had just landed in Ireland with Meno, and was modelling the fine stuffs Meno had imported to sell to the Irish elite.

      Such details did not concern the crowd, who had eyes only for Warbeck’s impressive appearance. Wasn’t he the earl of Warwick, son of the executed George Plantagenet, duke of Clarence? they cried. They were so persistent that Warbeck could only shake them off by swearing on the gospels and a crucifix before the mayor that he was no such person. Next two men, one English, the other Irish, appeared. Surely he was the bastard son of Richard III, they said, ‘swearing great oaths that they knew well I was [he]’. Once again Warbeck answered, also ‘with high oaths’, that he was not.

      At this point the pair revealed their hands. They were Yorkist conspirators against Henry VII. If Warbeck would act as their figurehead, they would offer him powerful support. Reluctantly, he claimed, he acquiesced. Then his grooming began. He was taught English and ‘what I should do and say’. Finally, his assumed identity was changed: from Richard III’s bastard to Richard, duke of York, the younger of the two princes in the Tower.1

      Meanwhile, almost six hundred miles away at Eltham, at the other extremity of his father’s dominions, the six-month-old Henry lay in one of his grand cradles. His status too was denoted by magnificent fabrics and furs. And he also was destined by his parents to follow in the wake of his murdered uncle, Richard, duke of York. But Richard’s name, title and inheritance were now in contention. Who would gain them? Henry? Or Warbeck?

      The scenes in Cork were not spontaneous. In mid-November, Charles VIII of France had financed and equipped a Yorkist expedition to Ireland. This had landed at Cork just before Warbeck, setting the town on edge and creating the explosive atmosphere to which Warbeck’s dazzling appearance was the spark.

      But equally, Warbeck’s epiphany was the fulfilment of the wildest dreams of the expedition’s leaders, for in him they had found the most promising Yorkist impersonator yet. Others had tried before, but Warbeck was in a different league. Despite his relatively modest birth as son of a bourgeois of Tournai, he was handsome, literate and affable. He also had the right experience, being widely travelled, multilingual and familiar with the ways of courts from his time in service to the royal house of Portugal.

      The conspirators wrote to Charles VIII with news of their good luck. Charles responded by sending an embassy to ‘Richard, duke of York’. It bore a courteous invitation to him to take up residence in France, and was accompanied by a fleet to carry him there. Warbeck accepted, and landed in France in March 1492. Charles VIII ‘received [him] honourably, as a kinsman and friend’.

      Perkin Warbeck alias ‘Richard, duke of York’ had made his entry on to the European stage. And the stage would prove a broad and resonant one. As Warbeck put it himself, ‘thence [from Ireland] I went into France, and from thence into Flanders, and from Flanders into Ireland, and from Ireland into Scotland, and so into England’. It was also a saga that would twice seem to threaten Henry’s life and lead his mother to seek safety for her son, СКАЧАТЬ