The Princes in the Tower, page 23
The reason for leaving Paris was a significant one – the presence of the Duke of York had been noticed by ‘English folks there’. From this moment, Paris was no longer considered a secure hiding place by the two Peirse guardians. This was certainly the case from September 1484 to August 1485 when Henry Tudor and his adherents fled Brittany and received asylum in Paris at the court of the new young French king, Charles VIII.76 As there were several former Yorkists among Henry’s followers, including young Richard’s half-brother and former Chamberlain to Edward IV, Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and his uncle, Sir Edward Woodville, there was an obvious risk of recognition.
Leaving Paris, they kept to northern France, staying from time to time in diverse cities until they finally arrived in Hainaut. The county of Hainaut was in the hands of the Burgundian dukes, except the town of Tournai, which was still under French rule. It seems that France was clearly preferred, which may indicate that the new destination was the city of Tournai.77 The exact moment of their arrival in Hainaut province remains unclear but it was probably towards the end of 1484.
If the ultimate goal was to provide Richard with a temporary refuge in a more secure and secluded place until peace and stability were restored in England, then a whole new situation arose for Richard of York and his supervisors with the deaths of King Richard and John Howard at the Battle of Bosworth on 22 August 148578 and the subsequent imprisonment of Howard’s son and heir, Thomas, Earl of Surrey.79
In January 1486, Henry VII’s marriage to Elizabeth of York80 and the subsequent reversal of the Titulus Regius – King Richard’s royal title – gave an important new twist to the situation. From this moment, Richard’s and Edward’s rights to the English throne would take precedence over the claim of the new English king.
Lines 45–49: The wanderings, with the sole purpose of secrecy and the preservation of the Yorkist royal bloodline, continued and Richard finally reached Middelburg in the County of Zeeland (via Malines, Antwerp and Bergen op Zoom). For the first time, we see an overlap with the confession of Perkin Warbeck.81 The story and timeline of both the Gelderland manuscript and that of the confession seem to coincide at this juncture. It was in the spring of 1487 that Perkin sailed with Edward Brampton’s wife to Portugal.82
It is interesting to note that, at this point, Richard, Duke of York, is resident in Bergen op Zoom and Middelburg, the location of the military preparations for the first Yorkist invasion in 1487 under the command of Martin Zwarte and other Yorkist leaders.83
Lines 50–52: The transcribed Middle Dutch text is very difficult to understand here. It seems that the Peirses and Richard leave Middelburg in a ship other than the ship belonging to Edward Brampton’s wife. The reason is hard to understand from the currently indecipherable text.
Also, the Middle Dutch word ‘leyckteken’ is difficult to translate, but it presumably means a scar (wound), physical sign (sign) or personal characteristic. Most likely, Richard was referring to several natural distinguishing marks on his body and face ‘by which those who knew him in his youth would recognize him’, proving him to be the true Duke of York.84
Apparently another ‘distinguishing feature’ of York was an ability to play the clavichord. This was a popular western European keyboard instrument in the late Middle Ages. Seemingly, Richard possessed a love of dance (and ‘play’), which may have included music.85 As we have seen, Rui de Sousa, the Portuguese Ambassador to England (1481–89), met the young prince and saw him ‘singing with his mother and one of his sisters and [said] that he sang very well’ (see Chapter 2).
In this context, it is relevant to note that the version of the Perkin Warbeck confession recorded in French contains a separate appendix, documenting a completely different childhood, which is absent in the English confession.86 According to the French confession, Perkin was not sent away but kept in Tournai, where he studied at the cathedral choir school. Historian Ann Wroe was the first to pay extensive attention to this alternative version of Perkin’s life:
Piers [Perkin] was deliberately placed on the ladder to a better higher life: tuition in music, service in the church, perhaps university. / Latin grammar / … if this version of his life was true … / Piers’ days at school would have been largely taken up with music of one kind or another. The [French] appendix said he was taught the manicordium: in French, this meant the clavichords [clavichord] or some sort of keyboard instrument, possibly the organ that Brampton had mentioned. / The confession took great care to give a plausible chronology for Piers’s life until he sailed for Portugal. But the fact remained that there were two distinct versions of his life. [Emphasis added.]87
This raises the significant question whether it was the Duke of York who received his education at the cathedral choir school in Tournai.
Lines 53–63: This paragraph spans a period of at least four years, in which Richard remains remarkably silent about his life in Portugal. Wroe’s rediscovery of the ‘Setúbal Testimonies’ revealed that the pretender had been at the Portuguese court not for one year, as the official confession of Perkin Warbeck alleged, but for more than three years.88 At the same time, Wroe also discovered a fifteenth-century poem remembering the ‘White Rose’ at the Portuguese court (and lamenting his fate at Henry’s hands).89
It is striking that between 1488 and 1491, Henry VII suddenly paid special attention to Portugal, ‘attention he had not shown before and was not to show again’.90 In 1489, he sent an English Embassy to Portugal which included Richmond Herald, Roger Machado. Machado would become one of Henry VII’s most important and trusted spies in the Warbeck affair.91
From Portugal, Richard sends Thomas Peirse back to his mother, Elizabeth Woodville, in England. He no longer sounds like a child: he now appears to be issuing commands. This would make Richard, Duke of York, 14 years of age when Peirse returned to England in the late summer of 1487.
The timing of Richard’s personal message to his mother is also significant, despatched shortly after the unsuccessful first Yorkist invasion in 1487 (the socalled ‘Lambert Simnel Affair’). This suggests that news of Edward V’s defeat at Stoke Field in the summer of 1487 had filtered through to Portugal and reached Richard of York and the Peirses. Is this why he now sent formal word to his mother, reassuring her, despite his brother’s death or injury, that he was still alive?
Henry Peirse died of the plague in Portugal. In 1488 and 1489, there was a great outbreak of plague in Lisbon and in 1491 it raged around the country.92 On his deathbed, he instructed Richard to travel to Ireland, to the Lords of Kildare and Desmond. There was still much support for the Yorkist cause in Ireland. What better way to cement lingering loyalty than by showing himself to the Irish lords so that they could see with their own eyes that he was King Edward’s son. These same lords had only recently supported his elder brother.
Lines 64–69: Although Richard does not mention the name of the master of the Breton ship which took him to Ireland, it was probably Pregent (Pierre Jean) Meno, mentioned in Warbeck’s confession.93 Richard emphasises in the Gelderland manuscript that ‘the master of the ship’ testified that he had carried Richard to Ireland. This testimony seems to be very important to him, probably as proof of his identity.94 Apparently, he was informed that the Breton was captured by Henry VII in December 1491 and seems to rely almost naively on Meno’s honest testimony.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Wroe discovered that Pregent Meno, after his capture, does not appear to have been punished and eventually reaped considerable rewards. Presumably, this was for information, or silence. She notes that Henry VII – again – performed the trick of transforming a close acquaintance of the ‘feigned lad’ into a ‘bastion of his own defences, well-mortared with rewards’ (as he did a few years later with Sir Robert Clifford).95
Lines 70–72: Richard must therefore have arrived in Ireland around November 1491. He tells us nothing of his apparently tumultuous arrival in Cork, despite being recognised as the Duke of York in the ‘official’ confession. However, it is clear from the description in the Gelderland manuscript that his royal lineage was recognised and honoured by the Irish lords. Significantly, the Duke of York, as Lieutenant of Ireland, seems to have been in Ireland in 1479, witnessing at Dublin the appointment of the Prior of the Hospital of Jerusalem, Sir James Keating, as Constable of Dublin Castle.96 If so, then we may assume that the young duke was honourably received by his deputy in Ireland, the Earl of Kildare (and other powerful lords).
At that time, Richard may have already had some notable distinctive facial marks, the same by which Margaret of York claimed to recognise him as her nephew in 1493.97 She had last seen the Duke of York in 1480 during her trip to England, less than six months after his visit to Ireland in December 1479. Not much would have changed about the young duke’s appearance in that short time. The above might explain why York went to Ireland first in 1491 and chose to reveal himself there as the Irish lords could possibly still recognise him by these marks and consequently acknowledge and support him as the heir of the House of York.
Lines 73–85: From Ireland, he left for France in the summer of 1492 at the invitation of the young French King Charles VIII, who promised support. Richard did not stay at the French court for long. On 3 November 1492, Charles VIII and Henry VII signed the peace treaty of Étaples, a condition of which was that both sides promised not to support any claimants, rebels or traitors of the other.98
Richard then left for his aunt, Margaret of York, who received her nephew with open arms:
At last the Duke of York himself came to me out of France, seeking help and assistance … I indeed for my part, when I gazed on this male Remnant of our family – who had come through so many perils and misfortunes – was deeply moved, and out of this natural affection … I embraced him as my only nephew and my only son.99
Here, Margaret seems to confirm York’s superior claim to the throne (over her other nephew, the Earl of Warwick) and thus her support for him on these terms. She may also have been speaking figuratively as clearly York was not her ‘son’ (nor her only nephew).
The Dendermonde Letter: Richard Plantagenet to Isabella, Queen of Spain, 25 August 1493
Shortly after his arrival at the court of Margaret of York, Richard writes a letter to the Spanish Queen Isabella. In it, he asks Isabella to use her influence to help him regain the kingdom that is rightfully his. The remarkable feature of this letter is that although much less detailed, it corresponds in many aspects with the story recorded in the Gelderland manuscript. (See Appendix 5.)
There is, however, one striking difference with the Gelderland manuscript. In the letter, Richard writes that his brother, ‘… the Prince of Wales that is, had been killed in a pitiable death and I too being about nine years of age had been handed over to a certain lord to be killed’. The Gelderland narrative, which – as noted – must have been written about the same time, makes no mention of his older brother’s (violent) death. Richard only talks about their separation after being handed over to Buckingham.
Emphasising the death of ‘The Prince of Wales’ in the Dendermonde letter seems understandable and easy to explain: it was of the greatest importance to present the Duke of York as the only surviving rightful heir to the English throne. Margaret’s last hope of a glorious resurrection of the House of York in England now rested on Richard, second son of Edward IV.100 It is also very likely, as Christine Weightman writes, that Maximilian was the power behind the Dendermonde letter.101
It may have also been important to claim that Edward died seemingly as a child rather than remind York’s potential backers that his brother had lost at Stoke and that Maximilian’s second fleet for him had ultimately been redeployed. Perhaps Margaret consented to the inclusion of Edward V’s ‘pitiable death’ on the understanding that Richard III wasn’t mentioned as a perpetrator. Thus, Margaret would not sacrifice her brother’s posthumous reputation in order to support the new heir.
The safeguarding of King Richard’s reputation seems to be further supported by York’s proclamation from Scotland in September 1496. Here, he styled himself Richard of England and presented his claim, ‘Richard by the grace of gode kinge of England and of France lorde of Ireland Prince of Wales’, while associating his rule with the ‘virtues and competence’ of the old Yorkist order.102
On 8 May 1495, Margaret would cause her lawyer and proctor, Lord Valasius of Portugal, to write to Pope Alexander VI. The legal supplication, witnessed by leading members of Burgundian Church and state, including Margaret’s Head of Household, Pierre de Lannoy, and two Papal Notary Publics, was clear in its confirmation of her nephew’s credentials and identity.
Margaret’s purpose was to seek revocation of the papal sentence of excommunication which Henry VII had procured from Alexander, and Innocent VIII before him, in March 1486, to be threatened on all who might dispute his right to reign. Even the pope himself, it was observed, could be ‘deceived and duped’ by one who had:
… usurped the realm itself and occupied it de facto, when he could not do so de jure … claiming untrue things, namely that the right of the same realm of England indubitably and by right belonged to him … notwithstanding that the most illustrious lord Richard survives in this life, the legitimate son of the said late king Edward, and successor and heir to his father’s realm.
Nor could Henry VII hide behind his marriage to Edward IV’s daughter, since ‘a daughter cannot and should not succeed in any way … when a son … is in existence’ and in plain terms, ‘no one should reign in another’s realm’ (emphasis added). The result being that the ‘alleged subjects of the same Henry’ would be liable for this ultimate threat to their immortal souls if ‘they, or any of them, should … presume to incite or cause to be incited [opposition to his reign], personally or through any other or others’.
This drew in the potential wrath of the Church on any who were likely to assist or support the young Richard of York, so that ‘she with her adherents seems to be forbidden, contrary to the needs of nature, to give her nephew aid, counsel or support’. Indeed, as the argument on her behalf proceeded, if the truth had been known to these two popes, or the falsehoods not put forward, ‘without doubt they would not have granted’ the Tudor king’s wishes, ‘but would rather have ordered the said most illustrious lord Richard, the son of King Edward, to be restored to his realm and enthroned in possession of it’.
Margaret’s arguments were set out as an urgent request for a reply to previous calls upon the pope which had gone unanswered, and the notarised document stated that there were ‘subjoined letters of attestation from … my said lady and those aforesaid persons who adhere or will adhere to her’. Such letters must also have accompanied Margaret’s previous appeal(s) to Pope Alexander and will have included depositions attesting to her nephew’s identity and bona fides.
The document followed King Richard’s proclamations of 7 December 1484 and 23 June 1485 in describing Henry as ‘claiming to be the blood of Lancaster, although he knows that he was born … from adulterous embraces on the part of both parents’. It ends with Margaret’s descriptor as ‘the most illustrious lady Margaret of England’.103
The first Borgia pope seems to have responded with new condemnations.104 By 22 September, Maximilian had interceded and despatched his own legal supplication on York’s behalf (see Appendix 8).105
Searches are ongoing for previous or subsequent correspondence with the Vatican.
Further Thoughts: 1. Men of the Sea
In order to form a balanced opinion of the accuracy of the Gelderland text, the manuscript was subjected to close examination. The initial findings and results, as described in the ‘content and analysis’ section, reveal that much of the information provided is correct and verifiable.
The surprising statement that Richard III’s confidant John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, was trusted with the secret removal of the young Duke of York from the Tower of London seems to be explained and substantiated by existing evidence. For example, we first note Howard’s urgent return to London from the royal progress on 22 July, a journey that may have been undertaken partly at night and included the arrest of a number of men at Bray. It also seems likely that the Percy retainer, Sir John Everingham of Birkin, North Yorkshire, may have accompanied him.106
Howard’s Household Books record how England’s Earl Marshal now took control of London, conducting a trial at Crosby’s Place, King Richard’s London residence. By 7 August, York (and his brother) could have been safely away.
Howard now writes to his son and heir, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, King Richard’s Steward, who is able to inform the king at Warwick.107 This letter, together with most of King Richard’s correspondence, would be lost or destroyed during the reign of Henry VII.
By 8 August, Howard’s Books confirm that he is ‘all content un to this day’108 and by 11 August, Howard has left the capital to return to his home in East Anglia and lead his own ducal progress to My Lady’s Shrine at Walsingham to give thanks. It might also be significant that at this precise moment, Queen Anne left Windsor to rejoin the king at Warwick. As with King Richard, however, no correspondence with his queen at Windsor survives from this time.
Why Howard was chosen for such a sensitive and secret mission is perhaps explained by his loyalty to the House of York and years of faithful service both on and off the field of battle. It is also very likely that Howard had developed a personal connection with King Edward’s youngest son, who had been created Duke of Norfolk before him. We can see that Howard was present at Westminster, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, to help convey the young boy to the Royal Apartments in the Tower to await his brother’s coronation. Also, and perhaps more significantly, Howard purchased a bow for the young boy. Howard had seven children of his own and it seems he knew young Richard well enough to know that he enjoyed shooting arrows (for the foregoing, see Chapters 3 and 4).
