Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
This is fascinating - I'm sure most of you probably have seen it, but it shows how Wroe really went the extra mile to research the life of this person:
https://medelai.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/perkin-warbeck/
The items that stand out to me are as follows:
- the Warbecque selected by Henry's French mythmaker allies across the Channel to be "Perkin"'s alleged father was not only among the lowest of the low in terms of class status, he was also a criminal: not the sort of person who'd be equipped to groom any offspring to impersonate any king's son, much less an English king's son
- the Pretender spoke and wrote better and more refined English than did Henry Tudor
- Henry almost certainly had the Pretender's face disfigured during the latter stages of the Pretender's captivity. Why do that if he was supposedly so patently not a blood relative of Edward IV?
Tamara
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
Henry was no fool. He may have had the Tournai details all ready for the confession as early as 1493, but he was never satisfied with them. He said he didn't like what was probably this evidence when Charles VIII of France sent it to him. He refused two offers to have the boy's parents sent over (from both France and Spain, which shows you how genuine that offer wasand if you look at the draft letter from Ferdinand and Isabella, which is in the Spanish archives, you can see that the secretary crossed out that thought not very long after they'd had it. It's great to see scheming minds actually at work.). Confronting Perkin with his alleged parents would have been a great publicity coup, as both Charles VIII and the Spanish sovereigns pointed out. But Henry ignored the Warbecks, or Werbecques, for the good reason that they didn't fit. And he kept quiet about the confession because it contained not one, but several, dubious stories. Just how dubious was only to emerge, however, when I went to Tournai.
It was the Tournai evidence, in all its minutiae, that convinced James Gairdner in the 1860s that the confession must be true. He had a large advantage over me here, because heor people working for himcould search through the Tournai archives. I couldn't, because they were completely destroyed by German bombing in 1943. I knew this before I went, but I had that little flicker of hopethe same flicker that makes you think, yes, that next box will contain the key to the whole mystery!that just a few scraps of paper might have escaped the inferno.
Alas, they hadn't. And when I got to Tournai, having taken the very slow train that chugs eastwards from Lille, I also found the archives were shut; not because it was Tuesday (since working in the French archives, I know the evil ways of continental archivists) but à l'improviste , or because the staff felt like it. Rather disconsolately, I took myself off to the public library to see if I could rustle up anything there; and yes, they had the entire set of transcriptions of the town accounts that were made by local historians in the 19th century. Thank goodness for them; where would we be without them?
Town accounts are a favourite source of mine. I did my thesis largely from the accounts of the town of Rodez, in south-west France. They usually include not only revenues and expenses but council deliberations, tax lists, lists for keeping watch on the walls, and so on. And there's no better way of checking the status of a family than seeing how often they appear, where they live, and what they're doing.
And the Tournai accounts showed me that some very wrong assumptions have been made on the basis of the Pretender's confession.. True, some of the names in it are there, but their jobs and their relationships are not as the confession gives them. More to the point, the Werbecques don't crop up anywhere. This doesn't mean they didn't exist; we have other records for them, in the shape of a will and in cases brought before the bishop's court. But their absence from the consular accounts does show that they were not, as historians often like to assume, a family of any importance in the town. Jehan Werbecque, Perkin's supposed father, was doing nothing in public life, not even watch duty, and almost all male householders of any repute were taking part in that. Besides, as I could tell from the watch rotas, the district where Jehan lived was decidedly the worst in town. (The worst part of town is always listed lastit's where all the industry and effluent tend to collect, just inside or just outside the walls.) All the harder to believe, therefore, that a boy of such extraordinary elegance and presence should have come from such a background.
As it happened, I had already discovered something else about Jehan Werbecque. Gairdner had found one conviction for grievous bodily harm in Tournai, and I had found another. This discovery was another of those completely fortuitous things that make research such a joy. It was mentioned in a footnote in volume 4 of Chastelain's History of the Dukes of Burgundy. I didn't really have much reason to be reading Chastelain anyway; had it not been for my longing to immerse myself completely in late 15th century literature, I wouldn't have been doing so. The footnote in Chastelain mentioned that Philip the Good in 1462 had pardoned one Jehan Werbecque of Beveren, sparing him from death. But Jehan had still been banished from the town for attacking a man with a beer mug, and had gone to Tournai therefore with a criminal cloud already over him. The original document, as Chastellain kindly told me, was still in the Brussels archive. I looked it up when I was there, and found it so sadly mouldered away since Chastellain's day that I could read only a few words more of it. So I was extremely grateful to him that he'd bothered to give so much of it. And, though it was quite a detour from his own research, it was rather important to mine, for it proved that Jehan Werbecque was a bad lot. One criminal conviction may be carelessness; two is a career, and it convinced me of two things. First, there was no possible chance that a king, such as Edward IV, would have consorted with a family like this and left a bastard behind; and, second, there was a high likelihood that a child of this family might have been sent away to be brought up more safely somewhere else. That's quite a lot to get out of a footnote found by chance!
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
There are too many things that point to Richard of England as a serious candidate for a real York heir and Henry Tudor was petrified of him. The courtesy he showed him around the court when he first had him as a captive. He was courted and backed by half of Europe. Henry was obsessed with finding out who he was. Henry went to war with France and put off entering the Holy League because of support by Margaret of Burgundy and Maximilian for him and the King of France. His agents toured every possible place to find evidence that he was false. Foreign Ambassadors continued to call him Duke of York, even when he was in the Tower, including Spain. Henry was practically told to get rid of him by their Catholic Majesties Isabella and Ferdinand or there would be no treaty and no marriage.
His face was disfigured on three separate occasions, when he was taken after defeat at Taunton, when he made his given confession the first time, when he came to London and again when he was again forced to make a confession before his public execution. He was badly beaten to prevent people from recognising him.
This article is excellent and shows the years of hard work, but also the pleasure of pouring over Medieval records and the hours and years it can take to bring a book to fruition. I can only be amazed.
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
Tamara
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
On Jan 27, 2018 2:02 PM, "poohlandeva" <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for this link. I recall a brief description of the research by Anne Wroe into the Warbecque family, which brought up many anomalies that expose the so called confession of Richard of England (known as Perkin Warbeck or Osbeck) and the obviously ridiculous and probably forged letter to his mother, from Matthew Lewis excellent book on Survival of the Princes in the Tower. I can't remember all of them, but very little trace of this family was confirmed and names and status were also different. In short Henry had probably found a criminal who needed a pardon, had his henchmen look into the dubious association with a town in Flanders and come up with a scattering of facts that sounded plausible for a family of this York pretender. There is also the testimony of Sir Edward Brampton which ties into the official version quite nicely as far as the Tudor regime are concerned. Ann Wroe exposed the anomalies and the lies with her extensive research and I would recommend her book on Warbeck as an excellent detailed account of his life and what may have been the true identity of this young man. I had not given much attention to claims of the survival of Richard, Duke of York or how many people, including serious historians, have taken more seriously the possibility that he may actually have been who he really claimed to be before reading Anne's book. I am less of a healthy skeptic and more of well this is actually possible now, after three more books raised the same idea. I constantly get hit on social media or on reviewing books if I raise even the slightest theory that survival of the two Princes in the Tower is one of the many fates that they faced. There are still too many out there for whom Richard iii definitely killed his nephews and what is more I personally can prove it. Nobody ever has. We don't know anything more than they vanished from public view and official records. Survival is very possible and now I believe, probable.
There are too many things that point to Richard of England as a serious candidate for a real York heir and Henry Tudor was petrified of him. The courtesy he showed him around the court when he first had him as a captive. He was courted and backed by half of Europe. Henry was obsessed with finding out who he was. Henry went to war with France and put off entering the Holy League because of support by Margaret of Burgundy and Maximilian for him and the King of France. His agents toured every possible place to find evidence that he was false. Foreign Ambassadors continued to call him Duke of York, even when he was in the Tower, including Spain. Henry was practically told to get rid of him by their Catholic Majesties Isabella and Ferdinand or there would be no treaty and no marriage.
His face was disfigured on three separate occasions, when he was taken after defeat at Taunton, when he made his given confession the first time, when he came to London and again when he was again forced to make a confession before his public execution. He was badly beaten to prevent people from recognising him.
This article is excellent and shows the years of hard work, but also the pleasure of pouring over Medieval records and the hours and years it can take to bring a book to fruition. I can only be amazed.
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
On Sunday, 28 January 2018, 17:02:14 GMT, Karen O karenoder4@... [] <> wrote:
This is in my Amazon cart right now for purchase in the next credit card billing cycle. Didn't she discover that Tudor kept a set of secret books in which a payment of seven pounds to the Duke of York is recorded? Then.points out that Henry Duke of York was only five at the time. Was it Richard Duke of York in his possession.?
On Jan 27, 2018 2:02 PM, "poohlandeva" <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for this link. I recall a brief description of the research by Anne Wroe into the Warbecque family, which brought up many anomalies that expose the so called confession of Richard of England (known as Perkin Warbeck or Osbeck) and the obviously ridiculous and probably forged letter to his mother, from Matthew Lewis excellent book on Survival of the Princes in the Tower. I can't remember all of them, but very little trace of this family was confirmed and names and status were also different. In short Henry had probably found a criminal who needed a pardon, had his henchmen look into the dubious association with a town in Flanders and come up with a scattering of facts that sounded plausible for a family of this York pretender. There is also the testimony of Sir Edward Brampton which ties into the official version quite nicely as far as the Tudor regime are concerned. Ann Wroe exposed the anomalies and the lies with her extensive research and I would recommend her book on Warbeck as an excellent detailed account of his life and what may have been the true identity of this young man. I had not given much attention to claims of the survival of Richard, Duke of York or how many people, including serious historians, have taken more seriously the possibility that he may actually have been who he really claimed to be before reading Anne's book. I am less of a healthy skeptic and more of well this is actually possible now, after three more books raised the same idea. I constantly get hit on social media or on reviewing books if I raise even the slightest theory that survival of the two Princes in the Tower is one of the many fates that they faced. There are still too many out there for whom Richard iii definitely killed his nephews and what is more I personally can prove it. Nobody ever has. We don't know anything more than they vanished from public view and official records. Survival is very possible and now I believe, probable.
There are too many things that point to Richard of England as a serious candidate for a real York heir and Henry Tudor was petrified of him. The courtesy he showed him around the court when he first had him as a captive. He was courted and backed by half of Europe. Henry was obsessed with finding out who he was. Henry went to war with France and put off entering the Holy League because of support by Margaret of Burgundy and Maximilian for him and the King of France. His agents toured every possible place to find evidence that he was false. Foreign Ambassadors continued to call him Duke of York, even when he was in the Tower, including Spain. Henry was practically told to get rid of him by their Catholic Majesties Isabella and Ferdinand or there would be no treaty and no marriage.
His face was disfigured on three separate occasions, when he was taken after defeat at Taunton, when he made his given confession the first time, when he came to London and again when he was again forced to make a confession before his public execution. He was badly beaten to prevent people from recognising him.
This article is excellent and shows the years of hard work, but also the pleasure of pouring over Medieval records and the hours and years it can take to bring a book to fruition. I can only be amazed.
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
-- Tournai also showed me how important it is always to check against the source. Other historians may well have been there before, but they won't be looking for the same thingsor, worse, they may be wilfully ignoring evidence that doesn't suit them. One discovery of mine in the National Archive was rather interesting on that score. I'll tell the story of it quickly.
-- Henry showed many strange, even baffling, courtesies to the Pretender once he had him in his power. Ambassadors round the court thought he was still treating him as a prince. Did he, in fact, think this young man was the Duke of York? One document certainly suggests that, if nothing else, he was hedging his bets about him. In fact, it's three documents, because it's a set of expenses from Henry's campaign in the West Country in pursuit of the Pretender, and these were kept in triplicate on pieces of paper and parchment that were not in the ordinary privy-puse expenses book. (I told you he was careful.) In each of these occurs a cash payment of £7 made to The Duke of York .
-- When I first read this, no alarm bells rang at all; it so patently couldn't mean Perkin, who is mentioned as Piers Osbeck in the same accounts, that I paid it no attention. Then, some weeks later, walking down Jermyn Street, I suddenly thought: Then who on earth does Henry mean? Not his little son Henry, who of course then held the title of Duke of York; he's not with him in the West, and besides, you don't give £7 to a six-year-old, especially not if you are Henry VII. Little Henry was not paid cash directly for five more years. Gradually, I came to thinkand still thinkthat Henry meant the Pretender, and that he had one name for him in public and another in private. I can't prove it; I just sense it. Sometimes sensors, or instinct, are the only instruments you can use in your research. And if Henry could write this, four years after saying that everyone knew his rival was really Perkin Warbeck, how much was the Perkin Warbeck story worth? --
Hillary: Wroe actually addressed the Arthurson argument (based on the confession) in this part of her Study Day talk:
-- At least there was an obvious place to start. Henry VII, we know, managed to extract a confession from the Pretender, supposedly the story of his life. Or rather, to be more precise, he managed to get him to sign a confession that had already been drawn up for him when he surrendered to Henry at Taunton, in October 1497. This has always been the key document in this case; Ian Arthurson's book actually starts with it, as though it settles the argument. Well, it doesn't settle the argument for me, not least because it was extracted in custody. Journalists can't accept stuff like that on its face, and historians shouldn't either. It was obvious that I had to take this document apart.
-- I therefore needed to get my hands on it; the real thing, if I could. So where was it? Bernard André, Henry's poet laureate, says it was printed; the Milanese ambassador to England said it was produced in numbers of copies to be distributed everywhere. But there's no sign of that. In fact, no original copy survives. What we have is one English version, reproduced in the London Chronicle and then recopied by Fabyan later in the 16th century, and a French version, again copied into registers that were kept in the archives of Tournai and Courtrai in modern Belgium.
-- There's an interesting story about that French version. I came across it only because I kept finding, in modern Belgian articles about the Pretender, bits and pieces about him that were not in the English histories. In one article, for example, Perkin learned to play the manicordium, a stringed instrument played with a plectrum, and went to Latin school. Where on earth was that from? It was not in the English confession. But James Gairdner, in his monograph on Perkin Warbeck of 1868, mentions the existence of a French version of the confession, and so I wrote to the Courtrai archives.
-- What happened next is typical of the sudden surprises and kindnesses you find all the time when you do research. The archivist at Courtrai sent me a photocopy of the French confession, and with it copies of three other documents: a letter of Henry VII describing Perkin's capture, a letter of Perkin supposedly to his mother, and a letter from Giles Daubeney, Henry's steward, describing the capture of the Pretender's wife in Cornwall. All these had been sent over from England at the same time, in October 1497. That letter of Daubeney's had never been translated or even seen in England. And I had been sent it out of the blue. I hadn't even paid for it!
-- Other historians haven't bothered to look at the French version of the confession, assuming they know all they need to know, but they're wrong. To begin with, the very differences tell us that there were two distinct versions of the Pretender's childhood around. In one, he wanders round the fairs of Europe; in the other he goes to grammar schol and learns music for years in Tournai. Obviously his history was not fixed. Someone was inventing it, or at least playing with it. All the Courtrai documents were also written in the same sort of Frenchnorth-eastern dialectand with no difference between a letter from an English king and one addressed by a lost son to a boatman's wife. Their French, and their expressions, had been standardised before they were sent over. So this was one big propaganda package that was being sent to Courtrai and Tournai, and it's probable that the Pretender had nothing much to do with any of it. In the famous letter to his mother , for example, not only does he get his own name wrong, and her name wrong, and her address wrong, but the whole letter is written like a piece of business correspondence, without the least sense of courtesy or emotion due to a mother after 12 years away. In fact, the contemporary Courtrai copyist calls it a report . If Henry is prepared to go to the length of concocting a false letter to a mother, what else may he be prepared to do?
-- As for the English confession, that was still a mystery. I kept expecting to come across some mastercopy as I searched in the English archives, but I never found one. This is odd in itself, because you would think that a document so vital to Henry would have been carefully preserved in its original, and that a document that was allegedly printed and sent all round the country would occasionally turn up somewhere. It doesn't, and this suggests to me that, far from being publicised, the confession was deliberately suppressed in Englandalmost as if the king was ashamed of it. And I think he was.
-- Henry was no fool. He may have had the Tournai details all ready for the confession as early as 1493, but he was never satisfied with them. He said he didn't like what was probably this evidence when Charles VIII of France sent it to him. He refused two offers to have the boy's parents sent over (from both France and Spain, which shows you how genuine that offer wasand if you look at the draft letter from Ferdinand and Isabella, which is in the Spanish archives, you can see that the secretary crossed out that thought not very long after they'd had it. It's great to see scheming minds actually at work.). Confronting Perkin with his alleged parents would have been a great publicity coup, as both Charles VIII and the Spanish sovereigns pointed out. But Henry ignored the Warbecks, or Werbecques, for the good reason that they didn't fit. And he kept quiet about the confession because it contained not one, but several, dubious stories. Just how dubious was only to emerge, however, when I went to Tournai. --
Tamara
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
On Jan 24, 2018 6:12 PM, "khafara@... []" <> wrote:
(I inadvertently put this in the wrong thread. I'm starting a new one for it. -Tamara Baker)
This is fascinating - I'm sure most of you probably have seen it, but it shows how Wroe really went the extra mile to research the life of this person:
https://medelai.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/perkin-warbeck/
The items that stand out to me are as follows:
- the Warbecque selected by Henry's French mythmaker allies across the Channel to be "Perkin"'s alleged father was not only among the lowest of the low in terms of class status, he was also a criminal: not the sort of person who'd be equipped to groom any offspring to impersonate any king's son, much less an English king's son
- the Pretender spoke and wrote better and more refined English than did Henry Tudor
- Henry almost certainly had the Pretender's face disfigured during the latter stages of the Pretender's captivity. Why do that if he was supposedly so patently not a blood relative of Edward IV?
Tamara
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
I didn't find Arthurson's book went very deep - usual sources. He appears to have relied on Gairdner's reports about what he saw in the Tournai archives.
Re: Ann Wroe on "Perkin Warbeck"
Personally, just personally, I think Warbeck is a red herring - as he was always meant to be. H
On Wednesday, 31 January 2018, 08:52:33 GMT, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
I didn't find Arthurson's book went very deep - usual sources. He appears to have relied on Gairdner's reports about what he saw in the Tournai archives.
