Perkin Warbeck.. Was he, or wasn't he..

[ilyala]

i am 99% convinced that perkin warbeck was not who he claimed he was. the reason i leave 1% out is because you can never be 100% sure of anything, not even who you are, but i think all evidences point to it being a fraud.

the fact that henry didn't want elizabeth to meet perkin might be considerate for her on his part, it might mean to spare her of pain, but i also see it as a way to not pay that much importance to perkin. had henry aranged a meeting between perkin and elizabeth he pretty much would have said 'it is possible that richard is alive' therefor not only strengthening perkin's claim (who could have easily said had he not been recognized by elizabeth that it's been a long time and he grew up and all...) but paving the way for other later claims... by not arranging the meeting he simply said 'richard is dead. get over yourself'.

as for margaret's support, i think she would have supported just about anyone who had a chance of taking henry's throne.

[stacey]

Well, if I HAD to make a bet--it would be that Perkin Warbeck was an imposter. But the resemblance between Warbeck and the general run of Plantagenet kings is indeed striking--so who knows...MY real question is that old one: What really DID happen to those two little princes in the tower? Or perhaps instead of saying "what" I should say "Who ordered their murders?" In that case my money is on Henry Tudor. I never liked that guy! Sneaky, manipulative, impossibly greedy, squinty-eyed--I don't think he would have hesitated a second to condone (or overlook) the murder of two innocent children if it meant he could grab the throne for himself....and after all it did turn out very nicely for Henry in the end, didn't it?!

[ilyala]

just because he was the one who won, doesn't mean he was the only one who wanted to win. and again i say, henry's not the kind to make unnecessary moves, not out of consideration but out of calculation...

[David_Pritchard]

Just a thought, but do we know where PW is buried? If so it would be easy to compare DNA samples with say EoY. This would decide the issue for once and for all!

...or maybe not. :-/

Perkin Warbeck was executed like a commoner, by hanging that is, on the Tyburn scaffold in London on Saturday 23rd 1499. It was the custom for the executioner to receive the dead prisoner's clothes and the body to be sent to a physician for disection and medical study. Parts of Perkin may well have been interred in a number of privies and trash pits as the disection proceeded over time.

David

[bell_the_cat]

Thanks David

So not much chance of a DNA test then - unless Lady Catherine managed to keep a lock of hair .....

[FaithWhiteRose]

I seriously don't think Perkin was Richard of York. it's more likely he was one of many Edward's bastards, and i think he is.

[dolgoruky18]

Perkin Warbeck's body was cut down after death and then beheaded. The body was taken to the Church of the Austin Friars in Bread Street and buried there. No memorial was raised, neither was his name included on the list of other executed men buried there. His head was displayed on London Bridge until it finally rotted away.

Lady Katherine married several more times, but never had children. When she made her Will, she referred to her "cousin" Margaret Kyme or Keymes, the obscure daughter of Cecily of York by her last marriage. Cecily was the younger sister of Elizabeth of York and the missing Princes. It is odd, thereore, that Katherine should refer to her in this way unless she still retained some belief that Perkin was who he claimed to be.

The most recent (and brilliant) book on the subject is "Perkin" by Ann Wroe first published in2003.

[FaithWhiteRose]

Perkin Warbeck's body was cut down after death and then beheaded. The body was taken to the Church of the Austin Friars in Bread Street and buried there. No memorial was raised, neither was his name included on the list of other executed men buried there. His head was displayed on London Bridge until it finally rotted away

The executions those days... is it even necessary for a person to be decapitated when he's already dead? I don't think so.

[perkinwarbeck]

we'll never know if Perkin was Richard, but the story is interesting, and Henry Tudor certainly took the armies he seemed to be able to gather very seriously.

[ilyala]

maybe because henry knew better than anyone that a shady claim does not prevent you from becoming king.

[perkinwarbeck]

exactly, but victories in the battlefield do, as Henry proved.

of course there is the argument that Perkin must have presented some sort of percieved legitimate claim to the English throne for all of rest of the royal houses of Europe to have accepted his presence in their courts, and in some cases given his invasion of Ireland material support. If Perkin were a total fraud, as he confessed he was later, it would seem that the French, the Spanish and the Imperial courts would have shied away from him.

at any rate, the Perkin Warbeck saga makes an excellent story.

[mcdnab]

The fact that both boys hadn't been since 1483 means that it is extremely difficult to assume, however much one might wish to, that they'd escaped.

The rumours of their disappearance were highly damaging for Richard III the fact he didn't produce them alive is in itself suggestive. There is also the fact that if he had produced them they would provide a fresh focus for rebellion at home and abroad. He was as the saying goes between a rock and a hard place - even if one of the boys died of natural causes he couldn't escape the suggestion that the boy had been murdered.

Others have suggested one or both of them might have died in an attempted rescue attempt or that in fact both fell ill and died during their captivity again explaining Richard's failure to produce them to counter the claims against him.

The candidates for murder range from Richard himself to Henry Tudor (though the idea they could have remained prisoners for nearly two years with no-one seeing them stretches my imagination a bit too far).

Recently Philippa Gregory's latest fiction book the White Queen suggests that Elizabeth Wydeville planted a changeling in the tower and smuggled her youngest son abroad - but she was in sanctuary at Westminster at the time and it was guarded so again a bit of a stretch of the imagination however entertaining it might be.

Recognition by Margaret of Burgundy is hardly surprising and given his success at other courts during the 1490's she certainly taught him well. Margaret's beef wasn't so much about the deposition of her brother Richard III (she certainly didn't seem to have such a problem with him deposing and bastardising her nephew) but about her long standing arguement with Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII about her English dower lands supporting would-be pretenders gave her a stick to continue beating Henry with.

The fact that Henry didn't put his wife through meeting with Warbeck isn't that surprising - she would naturally denounce him as a fraud and those who supported him would say she'd failed to acknowledge him under pressure from her husband or to safeguard her own and her children's position. It had no advantage to Henry VII after all Warbeck was defeated and a prisoner and now presented no threat.

The mystery haunted much of Henry's reign and despite the image of security the regular appearances of pretenders and his reaction to them have always suggested to me that he really wasn't sure what happened to Edward V and Richard Duke of York and Norfolk which in turn suggests that his mother in law Elizabeth Wydeville and his wife Elizabeth of York were also pretty much in the dark with only guesswork to go on or had decided not to tell him the truth. (which might support the theory that Elizabeth Wydeville had been involved or had knowledge of a rescue attempt that went wrong and that ended in one of the boys dying and the other perhaps been murdered as a reaction to the failed rescue).
I've never been convinced myself by Warbeck despite some very good research on the matter and some interesting possibilities

[ilyala]

The fact that both boys hadn't been since 1483 means that it is extremely difficult to assume, however much one might wish to, that they'd escaped.

The rumours of their disappearance were highly damaging for Richard III the fact he didn't produce them alive is in itself suggestive. There is also the fact that if he had produced them they would provide a fresh focus for rebellion at home and abroad. He was as the saying goes between a rock and a hard place - even if one of the boys died of natural causes he couldn't escape the suggestion that the boy had been murdered.

Others have suggested one or both of them might have died in an attempted rescue attempt or that in fact both fell ill and died during their captivity again explaining Richard's failure to produce them to counter the claims against him.

The candidates for murder range from Richard himself to Henry Tudor (though the idea they could have remained prisoners for nearly two years with no-one seeing them stretches my imagination a bit too far).

Recently Philippa Gregory's latest fiction book the White Queen suggests that Elizabeth Wydeville planted a changeling in the tower and smuggled her youngest son abroad - but she was in sanctuary at Westminster at the time and it was guarded so again a bit of a stretch of the imagination however entertaining it might be.

Recognition by Margaret of Burgundy is hardly surprising and given his success at other courts during the 1490's she certainly taught him well. Margaret's beef wasn't so much about the deposition of her brother Richard III (she certainly didn't seem to have such a problem with him deposing and bastardising her nephew) but about her long standing arguement with Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII about her English dower lands supporting would-be pretenders gave her a stick to continue beating Henry with.

The fact that Henry didn't put his wife through meeting with Warbeck isn't that surprising - she would naturally denounce him as a fraud and those who supported him would say she'd failed to acknowledge him under pressure from her husband or to safeguard her own and her children's position. It had no advantage to Henry VII after all Warbeck was defeated and a prisoner and now presented no threat.

The mystery haunted much of Henry's reign and despite the image of security the regular appearances of pretenders and his reaction to them have always suggested to me that he really wasn't sure what happened to Edward V and Richard Duke of York and Norfolk which in turn suggests that his mother in law Elizabeth Wydeville and his wife Elizabeth of York were also pretty much in the dark with only guesswork to go on or had decided not to tell him the truth. (which might support the theory that Elizabeth Wydeville had been involved or had knowledge of a rescue attempt that went wrong and that ended in one of the boys dying and the other perhaps been murdered as a reaction to the failed rescue).
I've never been convinced myself by Warbeck despite some very good research on the matter and some interesting possibilities

i agree with everything you said here - as far as i'm concerned it's a rational explanation for all the warbeck mysteries.

[perkinwarbeck]

I seriously don't think Perkin was Richard of York. it's more likely he was one of many Edward's bastards, and i think he is.

is there any documentation which supports this? I think that your assertion makes more sense than assuming that Perkin's confession was legitimate and he was a total hoax with no biological connection to the Plantagenets.

[ilyala]

it would explain his looking like edward iv and having a certain regal persona.... of course there is no proof, but then again there's no proof that he was richard of york either - actually it's most likely that he wasn't...

we're just here to discuss the possibility