Perkin Warbeck

Perkin Warbeck (born 1474?, Tournai, Flanders [now in Belgium]—died Nov. 23, 1499, London, Eng.) was an impostor and pretender to the throne of the first Tudor king of England, Henry VII. Vain, foolish, and incompetent, he was used by Henry’s Yorkist enemies in England and on the European continent in an unsuccessful plot to threaten the new Tudor dynasty.

The son of a local official in Flanders, Warbeck spent his youth in the service of various employers, ending up in Ireland in 1491. He was in Cork dressed in his master’s lavish silk clothes when excited townspeople there decided he must be of royal descent. The Yorkist interest was still strong in Ireland, and his admirers told Warbeck that he was a Yorkist heir to the crown of England, obligingly changing the identification as he denied one name after another. In the end he was persuaded to impersonate Richard, the young duke of York, who was presumed murdered with his brother King Edward V in 1483 in the Tower of London.

Assured of Irish support, Warbeck went to the continent to gather forces for an invasion of England. In the Netherlands the dowager duchess Margaret, sister of Edward IV, coached him on his impostor’s role, and he was supported at one time or another by France, by Maximilian I of Austria (Holy Roman emperor 1493–1519), by King James IV of Scotland (reigned 1488–1513), and by powerful men in England. After two feeble, abortive invasions of England in 1495 and 1496, he landed in Cornwall in 1497. The rebel forces soon numbered more than 6,000 men, but, faced with Henry’s troops, Warbeck fled to sanctuary at Beaulieu in Hampshire, where he was captured. Although at first treated leniently, he was hanged after trying to escape from the Tower of London.