Tudor (15 page)

Henry might have solved the Perkin problem by proving Perkin was not who he claimed to be. But he had left it rather late to start looking for the bodies of the princes in the Tower. Rather than risk finding at least one body missing, Henry hit upon a means of advertising the death of the little Richard, Duke of York, without mentioning the princes at all. He would bestow the boy's title on his second son.
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Henry's decision must have been a painful one for Elizabeth of York, who had loved her brother. Even nineteen years after he had disappeared she was still giving gifts to his old nurse.
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But dutifully she joined the celebrations when her three-year-old son, ‘Lord Harry, Duke of York', was invested with her brother's title in November 1494. It was an occasion the future Henry VIII would never forget. There were three days of tournaments and banquets, with Lord Harry dressed for his parade in a miniature suit of armour, while his five-year-old sister, the princess Margaret, awarded the prizes after the tournaments.

But their father was aware there were traitors at the feasts. An
English conspirator ‘turned' by Henry's spies in Burgundy had revealed a plan to assassinate him before an invasion was launched.
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Henry's children were to be disinherited – or killed – in favour of ‘Richard, Duke of York'. And at least one traitor was very close to the Tudor family: Henry's step-uncle, Sir William Stanley.
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Henry had lavished his favour on Sir William since his forces had won the battle of Bosworth for the king in 1485, and he was reputedly the richest commoner in England. Yet Sir William was reported as having said that if Richard, Duke of York, were alive he would never stand against him. Over the next few weeks Henry watched and waited.

The Christmas celebrations were as lavishly celebrated as ever. The previous year Sir William had spent Twelfth Night with the royal family at Westminster. The entertainments had included ‘St George' and a beautiful maiden leading a fire-spitting dragon through the hall, before the singing and dancing began with a procession of twelve masked men and women. As the music played the men danced and leapt so that spangles of gold fell from their costumes and scattered over the floor, while the ladies, moving as one in their long dresses, seemed to be gliding. Afterwards there were wines, ales and fine food spread over a tablecloth that glittered and sparkled in the candlelight. The entertainment went on until dawn.
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On 7 January 1495, however, the new day brought Sir William's downfall. A spy was prompted to ‘reveal' all to Henry, who ordered Sir William's arrest.

Sir William believed his offence – merely saying that he would not stand against Richard, Duke of York – was small enough to earn the king's forgiveness. But, Vergil recorded, ‘Henry feared such leniency to be dangerous to himself – others would be encouraged by William's avoidance of punishment and would undertake similar acts of folly'. The man who had saved Henry's life at Bosworth was executed in February 1495. Henry's last acknowledgment of the red coats of Sir William's men riding to his rescue at Bosworth was the £10 he gave to the executioner to make the death as quick and painless as possible. Betrayal by such a man had made the threat of assassination more
frightening and Henry withdrew to his chambers as his suspicions bred. It was yet one more example of treachery by a king's close kin and friends: Edward IV by his brother Clarence, Edward V by his uncle Richard III, Richard III by his ally the Duke of Buckingham.

Determined to survive, Henry's desire to control his kingdom now intensified. The nobility were sidelined in favour of officials from lowly origins who owed him everything, and he did not create many new nobles from their ranks. There had been fifty-five nobles at his accession, but by the time of his death there were only forty-two.
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Rather than ruling with the elite, as Kings of England always had, Henry kept them in fear. He imposed fines for offences, real and imagined, and obliged them to sign bonds for their good behaviour. Henry asked to be paid back only a little each year – so long as they retained his favour. Otherwise they would be ruined. Henry was ruling at the edge of the law, pushing his private rights to preserve his public position, and as the money rolled in the royal accounts were annotated minutely in Henry's own hand. But the more powerful he became the less regal he appeared. In Burgundy, Perkin, by contrast, resembled the young Henry of 1485, the ‘fair unknown', awaiting his opportunity.

Perkin had his own court in exile, and by July 1495 he was ready to take ‘his' throne, setting sail from Burgundy with fourteen ships and an invasion force of 6,000 men.
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Perkin had assumed all the charm expected of a prince, but he had none of the battle training. When he reached Deal in Kent his advance guard of 163 were slaughtered on the shore and Perkin ran away with his army, sailing on to Ireland and then Scotland, where at last he found refuge at the court of the twenty-two-year-old James IV. The Scottish king was happy at least to pretend that he believed Perkin was Richard – annoying Kings of England was a pleasurable and traditional pastime for Scottish monarchs.
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He had Perkin married to a beautiful young lady of the court, Lady Catherine Gordon, and agreed to take part in an invasion of England.

Perkin prepared a manifesto, which he hoped would prompt
spontaneous uprisings in his favour as soon as the invasion began. It described Henry as the son of ‘Owen Tudor of low birth in the country of Wales', a usurper, who had cruelly raised taxes, stopped valuable trade with Burgundy, undermined God's order by replacing the nobility with commoners, and persecuted them with his financial bonds.
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Perkin promised to end this wickedness and return to the ‘good governance' of his ‘father' Edward IV. From the perspective of his host, King James, if Perkin ended up on the throne all well and good: James was more interested, however, in the benefits of a popular strike against Scotland's hated neighbour, and large-scale pillaging. As soon as the invasion began James IV and his Scots ‘laid waste the fields, pillaged and then burnt the houses and villages. The men who resisted he cruelly killed.'
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This destroyed any chance of the northern English rising for Perkin and he retreated, aghast, back to Scotland to consider his next move.

Once again Henry intended to deal with the threat to his rule aggressively. He levied huge taxes to fund a massive retaliatory assault on Scotland; but then something unexpected happened. Far from the threat of Scottish invasion the impoverished inhabitants of Cornwall, resentful of the taxes, rebelled against Henry. They swept eastwards and had reached Blackheath, only two and a half miles from the royal palace at Greenwich, before Henry at last defeated them on 17 June 1497. The rebel leader ‘Lord Audley was drawn from Newgate to the Tower Hill in a coat of his own arms, painted upon paper reversed and all to torn'.
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Other rebels were sold into slavery, their lands confiscated, or huge fines imposed, and the west still seethed with resentment when, on 3 September, two Italian ambassadors were granted an audience with Henry at Woodstock in Oxfordshire.

Henry had a reputation in Europe as a king who had acquired huge riches and the Italians were anxious to meet him. They were escorted deep into the palace, through ever more richly decorated rooms, until they reached ‘a small hall' hung with the tapestries sewn with thread made of pure gold, known as Arras. At the far end stood the king, his
hand resting on a gilded chair. Henry was wearing a black cap pinned with ‘a large diamond and a most beautiful pearl'. A violet cloak, lined with cloth of gold, fell to the ground, and around his neck he wore a collar with four rows of precious stones and pearls. Standing alongside him was Prince Arthur. A month from his eleventh birthday, Arthur was tall for his age, and of ‘singular beauty and grace'. He chatted fluently to the ambassadors in Latin, confirming the view held in diplomatic circles that he was ‘a most distinguished' future son-in-law for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain – Henry had signed a treaty of friendship with the Spanish monarchs which was to be sealed with a marriage between Arthur and their daughter, Katherine of Aragon. Henry too was judged ‘gracious' and ‘grave', and they admired his clear and exquisite French.
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Following a private meeting with Henry after dinner the ambassadors were invited to meet the queen. They found Elizabeth of York in another small room looking most ‘handsome', in her stiff cloth of gold. It was best to stand in these royal fabrics, which were made with gold beaten into long strips and wound around a silk core before being woven, sometimes with green, red or white, to give it a particular colour. If you sat, the metal bent, which could leave deep creases. Elizabeth of York was beside her small, energetic mother-in-law, and her boisterous second son, the six-year-old Harry, Duke of York.
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A terracotta figure of a laughing, red-haired boy dressed in a jacket of green cloth of gold, is believed to be of the future Henry VIII at around this time. The cheeks are round and pink, the narrow eyes look away from the viewer, and the teeth flash white. The Italians were informed that there was famine in the rebel heartlands of the west, a sign ‘that the king is under the protection of God eternal'.
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His sons also advertised the security of succession and Henry seemed to them calm and confident, which was exactly the image he wished to project.

It was a front. Henry was anxiously waiting to see what Perkin would do next and the answer was not long coming. Only four days later Perkin landed at Whitesand Bay in Cornwall. Within weeks he had raised 8,000 men under his standard, which depicted a boy
emerging from a tomb, and Exeter was put under siege.
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But when the king's superior forces moved south, Perkin's lack of military training was again evident. He tried to flee the country, but was soon captured with his wife. Henry treated Lady Catherine Gordon as a victim of Perkin's duplicity, and she was found an honourable place in the queen's household. Once again Elizabeth of York's feelings were not considered, and for a time she was obliged to see the man who had posed as her dead brother at court, where he was expected to admit repeatedly his humble origins in Tournai.
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Rumours continued to circulate that Perkin was a Plantagenet, and as they did so his situation became increasingly grim. A deliberately engineered ‘escape' attempt saw him sent to the misery and humiliation of the stocks, and then to a dungeon in the Tower. With Perkin placed out of sight, and mind, Henry had a glamorous official history of his own life and accession read at court.
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Entitled ‘The Twelve Triumphs of Henry VII', the story mimicked the myth of the Labours of Hercules, and described how God had helped Henry survive the machinations of the Duchess of Burgundy, who was cast as Juno, Hercules' relentless enemy.
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Perkin was to appear at court once more. When a Burgundian bishop requested an interview with him in August 1498, Henry agreed to bring him out of the Tower, and suggested that the Spanish ambassador also see him. Henry hoped to reassure Ferdinand and Isabella that Perkin no longer posed any threat. Perkin was duly brought from the Tower where, the Spanish ambassador was assured, ‘he sees neither sun nor moon'. He appeared frail, and ‘so much changed' the ambassador judged that he did not have long to live.
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Henry asked Perkin why he had pretended to be Richard, Duke of York. Perkin dutifully blamed Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. A previously unnoticed detail in the Great Wardrobe Accounts reveals Henry was so happy with Perkin's performance that in November he rewarded him with a smart new doublet of black damask as well as new shirts and hose to wear in the Tower.
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However, an incident just a few months later left the Spanish still doubtful the Tudor dynasty had a long-term future.

Shut away in the Tower, along with Perkin, was the genuine last male heir of the House of York: Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who after a few brief months in the care of Margaret Beaufort had been imprisoned in 1486 aged eleven, following the first stirring of Yorkist dissent. In February 1499 a new impostor claiming to be Edward Plantagenet was caught. He was soon hanged, but the Spanish were now aware that there was a royal prisoner in the Tower who remained a possible focus for future anti-Tudor feeling. The Spanish sent Henry a message implying strongly that if Arthur's marriage to Katherine of Aragon was to go ahead, Edward Plantagenet's life was a luxury Henry could not afford. Henry was devastated by this threat. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had reconquered Granada, expelled the Muslim invaders, and taken a united Spain to the front rank of European powers. Arthur's marriage to their daughter would announce to the world that the Tudors were fit to be embraced by the great monarchies of Europe. Yet Henry shrank from the price now demanded of him. In March he was so troubled that a visitor thought he aged twenty years in a month.

Henry had regular, even daily ‘private conversations' with his Franciscan confessors, and still sent expensive gifts to the cathedral in Vannes where St Vincent Ferrer, the messenger of penance, was buried.
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He was genuinely torn between the requirements of the confessional, with its demand for an honest examination of conscience, and the brutal necessities of rule. As he struggled with his decision Henry heard a sermon every day that Lent, ‘and continued for the rest of the day at his devotions'.
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Eventually, he convinced himself that he would be justified in testing Edward Plantagenet's loyalty, and that if his prisoner proved willing to commit treason, then executing him would be an honest decision, and not plain murder.