Famous Imposters 3

Famous Imposters 3

After the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471, Edward IV had

but little to contend against. His powerful foes were all either

dead or so utterly beaten as to be powerless for effective war. The

Lancastrian hopes had disappeared with the death of Henry VI in the

Tower. Margaret of Anjou (wife of Henry VI) defeated at Tewkesbury,

was in prison. Warwick had been slain at Barnet, and so far as fighting

was concerned, King Edward had a prolonged holiday. It was these years

of peace--when the coming and going of even a king was unrecorded with

that precision which marks historical accuracy--that made the period

antecedent to Perkin’s birth. Perkin bore an unmistakable likeness to

Edward IV. Not merely that resemblance which marks a family or a race

but an individual likeness. Moreover the young manhood of the two ran

on parallel lines. Edward was born in 1442, and in 1461, before he

was nineteen, won the battle of Mortimer’s Cross which, with Towton,

placed him on the throne. Perkin Warbeck at seventeen made his bid for

royalty. It is hardly necessary to consider what is a manifest error

in Perkin’s Confession--that he was only nine years old, not eleven,

at the time of the murder of Edward V. Nineteen was young enough in

all conscience to begin an intrigue for a crown; but if the Confession

is to be accepted as gospel this would make him only seventeen at the

time of his going to Ireland--a manifest impossibility. Any statement

regarding one’s own birth is manifestly not to be relied on. At best

such can only be an assertion _minus_ the possibility of testing whence

an error might come. Regarding his parentage, in case it may be alleged

that there is no record of the wife of Jehan Warbecque having been

in England, it may be allowed to recall a story which Alfred, Lord

Tennyson used to say was amongst the hundred best stories. It ran thus:

 

A noble at the Court of Louis XIV was extremely like the King,

who on its being pointed out to him sent for his double and asked

him:

 

“Was your mother ever at Court?”

 

Bowing low, he replied:

 

“No, sire; but my father was!”

 

Of course Perkin Warbeck’s real adventures, in the sense of dangers,

began after his claim to be the brother of Edward V was put forward.

Henry VII was not slow in taking whatever steps might be necessary

to protect his crown; there had been but short shrift for Lambert

Simnel, and Perkin Warbeck was a much more dangerous aspirant. When

Charles VIII invited him to Paris, after the war with France had broken

out, Henry besieged Boulogne and made a treaty under which Perkin

Warbeck was dismissed from France. After making an attempt to capture

Waterford, the adventurer transferred the scene of his endeavours

from Ireland to Scotland which offered him greater possibilities for

intrigue on account of the struggles between James IV and Henry VII.

James, who finally found it necessary to hasten his departure, seemed

to believe really in his pretensions, for he gave him in marriage

a kinswoman of his own, Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of

Huntly--who by the way was re-married no less than three times after

Perkin Warbeck’s death. Through the influence of Henry VII, direct

or indirect, Perkin had to leave Scotland as he had been previously

forced from Burgundy and the Low Countries. Country after country

having been closed to him, he made desperate efforts in Cornwall, where

he captured St. Michael’s Mount, and in Devon, where he laid siege

to Exeter. This however being raised by the Royal forces, he sought

sanctuary in Beaulieu in the New Forest where, on promise of his life,

he surrendered. He was sent to the Tower and well treated; but on

attempting to escape thence a year later, 1499, he was taken. He was

hanged at Tyburn in the same year.

 

Pierrequin Warbecque’s enterprise was in any case a desperate one

and bound to end tragically--unless, of course, he could succeed

in establishing his (alleged) claim to the throne in law and then

in supporting it at great odds. The latter would necessitate his

vanquishing two desperate fighting men both of them devoid of fear or

scruples--Richard III and Henry VII. In any case he had the Houses of

Lancaster, Plantagenet and Tudor against him and he fought with the

rope round his neck.

 

An Act of Parliament, 1 Richard III, Cap. 15, made at Westminster

on the 23 Jan., 1485, precluded all possibility--even if Warbeck

should have satisfied the nation of his identity--of a legal claim to

the throne, for it forbade any recognition of the offspring of Lady

Elizabeth Grey to whom Edward IV was secretly married, in May, 1464,

the issue of which marriage were Edward V and his brother, Richard. The

act is short and is worth reading, if only for its quaint phraseology.

 

_Cap XV._ Item for certayn great causes and consideracions

touchynge the suretye of the kynges noble persone as of this

realme, by the advyce and assente of his lordes spirituall and

temporal, and the commons in this present parliament assembled,

and by the auctorite of the same. It is ordeined established

and enacted, that all letters patentes, states confrymacions

and actes of parlyament of anye castels seignowries, maners,

landes, tenementes, fermes, fee fermes, franchises, liberties,

or other hereditamentes made at any tyme to Elizabeth late wyfe

of syr John Gray Knight; and now late callinge her selfe queene

of England, by what so ever name or names she be called in the

same, shalbe from the fyrst day of May last past utterly voyd,

adnulled and of no strengthe nor effecte in the lawe. And that

no person or persons bee charged to our sayde soveraygne lord

the Kynge, nor to the sayde Elyzabeth, of or for any issues,

prifites, or revenues of any of the sayde seignowries, castelles,

maners, landes, tenementes, fermes or other hereditamentes nor

for any trespas or other intromittynge in the same, nor for anye

by suretye by persone or persones to her or to her use--made by

them before the sayde fyrst daie of May last passed, but shalbe

therof agaynste the sayd Kynge and the sayde Elizabeth clerly

discharged and acquyte forever.[1]

 

[1] In the above memorandum no statement is made regarding Jane

Shore, though it may be that she had much to do with Perkin

Warbeck.

 

 

 

 

B. THE HIDDEN KING

 

 

The personality, nature and life of Sebastian, King of Portugal,

lent themselves to the strange structure of events which followed

his strenuous and somewhat eccentric and stormy life. He was born in

1554, and was the son of Prince John and his wife Juana, daughter of

the Emperor Charles V. He succeeded his grandfather, John III, at

the age of three. His long minority aided the special development

of his character. The preceptor appointed to rule his youth was a

Jesuit, Luiz-Goncalvoz de Camara. Not unnaturally his teacher used his

position to further the religious aims and intrigues of his strenuous

Order. Sebastian was the kind of youth who is beloved by his female

relatives--quite apart from his being a King; and naturally he was

treated by the women in a manner to further his waywardness. When he

was fourteen years old he was crowned. From thence on he insisted on

having his way in everything, and grew into a young manhood which was

of the type beloved of an adventurous people. He was thus described:

 

“He was a headstrong violent nature, of reckless courage, of boundless

ambition founded on a deep religious feeling. At the time of his

coronation he was called ‘Another Alexander.’ He loved all kinds of

danger, and found a keen pleasure in going out in a tempest in a small

boat and in actually running under the guns of his own forts where his

commands were stringent that any vessel coming in shore should be fired

on. He was a notable horseman and could steer his charger efficiently

by the pressure of either knee--indeed he was of such muscular vigour

that he could, by the mere stringency of the pressure of his knees,

make a powerful horse tremble and sweat. He was a great swordsman, and

quite fearless. ‘What is fear?’ he used to say. Restless by nature he

hardly knew what it was to be tired.”

 

And yet this young man--warrior as he was, had a feminine cast of

face; his features were symmetrically formed with just sufficient

droop in the lower lip to give the characteristic ‘note’ of Austrian

physiognomy. His complexion was as fine and transparent as a girl’s;

his eyes were clear and of blue; his hair of reddish gold. His height

was medium, his figure fine; he was vigorous and active. He had an

air of profound gravity and stern enthusiasm. Altogether he was, even

without his Royal state, just such a young man as might stand for the

idol of a young maid’s dream.

 

And yet he did not seem much of a lover. When, in 1576, he entered

Spain to meet Philip II at Guadaloupe to ask the hand of the Infanta

Isabella in marriage, he was described as “cold as a wooer as he

was ardent as a warrior.” His eyes were so set on ambition that mere

woman’s beauty did not seem to attract him. Events--even that event,

the meeting--fostered his ambition. When he knelt to his host, the

elder king kissed him and addressed him as “Your Majesty” the first

time the great title had been used to a Portuguese king. The effect

must have come but little later for at that meeting he kissed the

hand of the old warrior, the Duke of Alva, and uncovered to him. His

underlying pride, however, was shewn at the close of that very meeting,

for he claimed equal rights in formality with the Spanish king; and

there was a danger that the visit of ceremony might end worse than it

began. Neither king would enter the carriage in which they were to

proceed together, until the host suggested that as there were two doors

they should enter at the same time.

 

Sebastian’s religious fervour and military ambition became one when

he conceived the idea of renewing the Crusades; he would recover the

Holy Land from the dominion of the Paynim and become himself master of

Morocco in the doing of it. With the latter object in his immediate

view, he made in 1574, against the wise counsels of Queen Catherine,

a _sortie de reconnaissance_ of the African coast; but without any

result--except the fixing of his resolution to proceed. In 1578 his

scheme was complete. He would listen to no warning or counsel on the

subject even from the Pope, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, or the Duke of

Nassau. He seemed to foresee the realization of his dreams, and would

forego nothing. He gathered an army of some 18,000 men (of which less