Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders: Simnel, Warbeck, and Warwick > Status Update

‘Warwick’s head was not spiked upon London Bridge as Warbeck’s had been and left to rot in the winter cold, but rather taken by boat along with his body to Bisham Abbey for burial. At the king’s own considerable expense of £12 18s 2d, the earl was interred near his kingmaking grandfather and other relations.’

‘When considering the available evidence together, that is Warbeck’s confession, the letter to his mother, and then inquiries made by the Spanish authorities of the Portuguese merchants, there are solid grounds to believe the man of the English called Perkin Warbeck was indeed a son of Tournai and not a reborn prince of York.’

‘In the circumstances, a daughter of a veteran Scottish earl was a reasonable match for Warbeck in lieu of other royal candidates, but hardly a match which alone can be taken to confirm his Yorkist credentials, as some historians have striven to claim. It was, however, an act designed to provoke the English king and further impair Anglo-Scottish relations - precisely what James IV intended.’

‘Ultimately, William Stanley’s loyalty to the Yorkist cause was reserved for Edward IV and his progeny, as shown by his betrayal of Richard III in 1485 and failure to support Lambert Simnel’s Warwick plot in 1487. Once a pretender who had yet to be conclusively ruled out as a son of his former master emerged, Stanley’s head was turned.’

‘Considering the boy’s tender age and the timing, the purpose was clear - how could Warbeck across the Channel be given any credence as the duke of York when, right here in England, before all the lords and prelates of the realm, was the duke himself, the present king’s second son? A new duke of York could not, after all, be created if the previous incumbent was believed alive.’

‘Isabella and Ferdinand were unmoved, and the letter did not provoke the response Warbeck and Margaret hoped for. It was instead filed away with the nonchalant, non-committal note, ‘From Richard, who styles himself King of England’, and two years later, on 20 July 1495, it was further noted in official records that Isabella had apparently shown the dowager duchess that the ‘whole affair was an imposture’

‘Leading further credibility to Warbeck’s 1497 confession that he was merely an imposter is the fact that many of his mentioned relations are found in the fifteenth-century archives of Tournai; Pierart Flan, known as Petir Flam in the confession, and Pierart Faron, or Petir Ffaro, are found in municipal records for 1459, whilst in 1474 is a record for Jehan de Werbecque, son of the late Diericq de Werbecque.’

‘Despite the gravity of the act, however, in time Henry proved surprisingly lenient with many of the rebels who survived the Stoke Field campaign. The two Scrope barons, for example, were pardoned in 1489, as were seventy-eight others between August 1487 and August 1489. He also dealt gently with the Irish nobility, although through political necessity as much as magnanimity.’

‘Lambert Simnel has entered the historical record as the curious moniker of the enigmatic young figure credited with impersonating the earl of Warwick, yet in early 1487 the royal authorities had little idea about the true identity of this imposter, other than that he was supposedly the son of an Oxford organ maker. In fact, what little we now know of Simnel only comes from official records produced after’