Who was Perkin Warbeck?

At this great distance in time, there can be no definitive answer to the mystery of the survival of the princes and at this great divide we can never know the absolute truth about “Perkin Warbeck, whether the princes were strangled to death in the Tower by their uncle Richard III—as the Tudors said—or if one of them was smuggled to safety on the Continent, as the so-called imposter “Perkin” claimed. Too much time has passed. Evidence has been lost, or destroyed, sometimes by royal decree, and Shakespeare has forged myth into historical fact. But there are serious shortcomings in the theory that King Edward’s sons were murdered by Richard III, and much remains unexplained. As in the case of Richard’s “hump,” however, we have only the Tudors’ word that he murdered them. What evidence is offered by the historical record would seem to exonerate Richard III of the crime.

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Experience teaches us that the truth is not always black or white, but a mixture of grays, and usually a great deal more complicated than we realize. Such seems to be the case here. A recent biography delves deeper into the enigma of Perkin Warbeck than anyone has yet attempted, and a careful study of the facts uncovered will, for some, cast doubt that “Perkin Warbeck” was a fraud as the Tudors claimed. My research and review of the facts and the inconsistencies surrounding the Pretender have convinced me that he was the lost prince in the Tower. Francis Bacon, writing in the 1620’s, expressed the general bewilderment of his contemporaries when he called the case of the Pretender “one of the strangest examples of a personation that ever was.” [1] Who was this mysterious young man nicknamed “Perkin Warbeck” who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, younger son of King Edward IV? Handsome, courtly, with a stunning royal presence and “the voice of a king”, he was, as his biographer notes, “the perfect prince.” [2] Certainly, he was greeted as such by the world.

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As noted by a chronicler unfriendly to the Yorkist cause, the Pretender passed as Prince Richard for a very long time, and without a mistake, deceiving everyone. [3] The probability that a false prince could be found who not only resembled Edward IV and bore the marks of Plantagenet royalty, but could play the part of a prince with aplomb, and who also shared with the younger prince in the Tower a talent for music, defies probability.

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Was this most intriguing and charming pretender a true prince? The greatest European monarchs of the age seemed to have thought so, and that includes Henry VII. They either used him as a pawn, championed his cause, or took him under their protection. The King of France wouldn’t deliver him up to the King of England; Isabella and Ferdinand wouldn’t send their daughter to England to marry Prince Arthur while he lived; and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian backed the young man without reservation. James IV went one better and gave him not only support, but the hand of his dazzlingly beautiful royal cousin, Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly.

 

 

The official narrative of the Pretender given under torture contains many elements applicable to the life of the real prince, Richard, Duke of York. The two worlds of the Pretender, so far apart, should never have touched, yet they did, time and again. Here is a child who resembled King Edward IV and bore the marks of Plantagenet royalty in his strangely defective eye and drooping eyelid; whose name meant “real” and “orphan;” [4] who was of no known address or clear parentage; who moved all over Europe, always in the company of English people (to explain his fluency in the English language) and who lived for a time in Portugal, somehow managing to attach himself to the wife of one of Edward IV and Richard III’s most loyal retainers—the Portuguese Jew, Duarte Brandeo, known as Sir Edward Brampton. Even Edward the Fourth makes an appearance in “Perkin’s” tale, acting as his godfather. [5] Both princes are linked by a common thread of wandering, jeopardy, and sorrow.

That Henry VII allowed Brampton to be named in “Perkin’s” confession is evidence that this information was well known, could not be suppressed, and therefore had to be explained away. In order to denigrate the connection to Edward IV’s loyal retainer, Brampton’s wife was substituted as the contact, but the tale is startling nevertheless. In a most curious coincidence, the child, whoever he was, went to Portugal in the company of Sir Edward Brampton’s wife in 1487, after the Battle of Stoke and the failure of the rebellion against Henry VII led by John de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. At the time Bruges was infested with plague and seething with political unrest and would not have provided a safe refuge for a fugitive prince.

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According to Brampton’s testimony given in 1496 to Henry Tudor’s man in Portugal, he didn’t wish to keep the boy, for he had nothing to offer except a talent for music.  This talent was so extraordinary that, in later years, it drove Henry VII’s court musician, John Skelton, to a fever pitch of jealousy. Most remarkably, this talent for music was shared by the younger prince in the Tower and noted by a variety of observers who had met King Edward’s younger son. [6] It is also a talent that seems to have run in the family, since Elizabeth of York was musically gifted.

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Was the so-called “Perkin Warbeck” the younger prince in the Tower, or not? Henry VII declared the young man a boatman’s son and nicknamed him “Perkin Warbeck”. Yet what is perplexing is why the first Tudor king behaved not as if the young man was an upstart—but as if he faced the clash of another legitimate claimant.

Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, Richard’s strongest supporter, never deserted the one she called her nephew. After his capture, she did everything humanly possible to secure his release. On his death, she mourned profusely, and on the first anniversary of his death, broken-hearted, she burned three times the usual number of candles in her chapel at Binche. Nor did the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian of Austria ever abandon him, though the young man was of no further use to him. Maximilian did all he could to free Richard, and even considered going to war against Henry until civil strife in his own land made it impossible. Instead, he made Henry the astounding offer to resign in perpetuity—for himself, and for Richard, and for all their descendants—their claims to the throne of England. All Maximilian wanted in return was to have the young man back safe, and whole.

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This is not the way of kings.

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Henry refused all Maximilian’s offers. In this, and every possible way, the Pretender’s great rival, Henry VII, behaved as if he, too, believed the young man to be the lost prince, referring to him in private correspondence as the Duke of York and expending vast sums of money to defeat his cause (sixty thousand pounds alone for war with Scotland because James IV wouldn’t relinquish his support of “Perkin”). Nor did he, a miser, seem to resent the expenditure, or to count the cost. He never spent—and was never again to spend—so much money resisting anyone. In his privy purse accounts, the day “Perkin” was apprehended went down as a newsworthy event equal to the announcement of the peace with France in 1492, and the arrival of Katherine of Aragon in 1501.

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For eight years, the pretender tormented Henry. After his capture, Henry used “Perkin” as a bargaining chip to effect peace treaties, gain better trade advantages, and win political and economic concessions, especially from James of Scotland and Maximilian of Austria. When James IV demanded that Henry ameliorate the treatment of his cousins, Lady Catherine Gordon and her husband, Henry responded that if he wished better treatment for them, he should consider marrying his daughter Margaret. James did just that.

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In the account of his life given before his capture, the Pretender said that he hid in various countries with two men who were sent to guard and govern him. These guards disappeared from his life when one died and the other was sent back to his own country (suggesting that this man was not English). As noted in Wroe, Brampton received a reward from Richard III in 1484 for services rendered. A similar reward on the same day was also given to Christopher Coleyns, esquire. He, like Brampton, has been a gentleman usher to King Edward IV, and was also a seaman who would know how to get goods—or a child—out of London. Like Brampton, he was granted a pardon by Henry VII, but disappeared from the historical record, perhaps due to his death. Meanwhile, Brampton returned to his own country, Portugal. [7]

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One striking feature of the Pretender’s life is the loose connection between him and his family in Tournai. The Pretender’s confession is riddled with errors in family names, occupations, and general information, as if it had been a memorized account, and neither the Pretender nor the Werbecques exhibited any great affection or concern for one another such as would be expected from a family in these circumstances. “Perkin’s” letter to his mother written in captivity is notable for its stiff courtesy and lack of feeling. Furthermore, and most curiously, Henry’s obsessive spy-work never established, to anyone’s satisfaction, including Henry’s own, that “Perkin Warbeck” was the son of the boatman, Jehan Werbecque, or even that Jehan Werbecque had a son named Perkin. [8] There is no record or evidence of his birth except a reference that was drawn up after his death that said his parents were poor and suggested they were unknown. The child, “Perrequin,”simply appeared in Tournai at the age of ten, was sent away to fend largely for himself, and never returned. [9] His parents weren’t interested in him and seemed to play no part in his upbringing. [11] To explain the loose family bonds, some surmised that the Werbecques had played foster-parents to a fugitive prince. [12]

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Among the many inconsistencies in the tale of “Perkin Warbeck,” is Henry VII’s own ambiguity about the Pretender. The Pretender was someone whose real name and real parents the best labors of Henry’s spies could never quite uncover. The city of Tourani never claimed him, and Henry never asked for confirmation. [13] As Henry noted himself, nothing explained the endurance of the Pretender’s reputation as the true prince or the unwavering support of the great names that backed him, such as James IV of Scotland, Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, Maximilian, King of the Romans, Philip the Handsome, King of Castille, and Charles VIII, King of France. Both “Perkin” and his backers seemed to feel themselves under an obligation to one another that had not been invented and that the confession did not change. [13]

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Henry VII lived in terror of the reappearance of the younger prince in the Tower, suggesting that he knew both princes had not perished. Sir Thomas More admits that “Some remain yet in doubt whether they were in (Richard III’s) days destroyed or no.” [14] Polydore Vergil, Henry’s own historian, records that “It is generally reported and believed that the sons of Edward IV were still alive, having been conveyed secretly away and obscurely hidden in some distant region.” Francis Bacon, another faithful Tudor supporter, also records these doubts regarding the death of the princes: “It was still whispered everywhere that at least one of the children of Edward the Fourth was living”. [15]

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In the month after “Perkin’s” execution, Henry fell so ill that the succession was rumored. His biographer notes that the king did not feel safe even after “Perkin” was gone. Tiny acts of piety suggest that his conscience pricked him, and punishing those who had believed in “Perkin” became an obsession. He assessed enormous fines on all who had shown him sympathy, and he made notations about the fines in his own hand on the rolls. Seven years after the event, in 1504, men were still being put to death, or attainted for treason because of “Perkin Warbeck.”

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As he himself faced death, Henry seemed to be a haunted man, His royal will carried a final echo of his struggles with Lady Catherine Gordon’s husband as he increased the number of daily masses and offerings for his soul, and implored the Virgin that his “ancient and ghostly enemy” nor other horned devil be permitted to dive into his throat to seize his soul.

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Today’s informed reader may point to the bones in an urn at Westminster Abbey. The skeletal remains that were found at the base of the stairs two hundred years later, put into an urn, and declared peremptorily to be those of the princes have never been scientifically validated. The forensic examination done in 1933 was flawed and did not even check for gender. More recent requests for DNA analysis have been denied, perhaps because the search for truth is complicated by its ramifications. If the results came back negative or inconclusive, then one of the princes survived Richard’s reign and Perkin may have been who he claimed he was. It bears repeating that there has been a human presence at the Tower of London for over two thousand years and finding skeletal remains there is neither surprising nor uncommon. The bones in the urn could date from Roman times, or they could be female. Until a modern forensic examination is conducted and the results confirmed by DNA, we just do not know. [16]

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Ultimately, the actions and behavior of those most closely involved in the drama of the princes in the Tower, including the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, and Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, James IV of Scotland, and Henry VII himself seem to evince a belief bordering on conviction that the young man called “Perkin” was the true prince. The fact that he was not only of the right age and appearance, but also exhibited an exceptional talent for music—as little Prince Richard had done—makes it very difficult to dismiss his claim. To find all these qualities combined in a fraud defies probability and increases the likelihood that the Pretender was King Edward’s son, Richard of York, executed by Henry VII as “Perkin Warbeck.”

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The subject of “Perkin Warbeck” is fraught with controversy in England where he tends to be dismissed as a fraud, so much so that Ann Wroe’s biography published in the U.S. as  The Perfect Prince was entitled Perkin: A Story of Deception for the U.K. market. Yet Wroe states that no explanation or piece of evidence offered up by Henry and his spies could explain who “Perkin” was, and Henry knew it. [17] Many contemporaries of the Pretender agreed. The poet and chronicler Jean Molinet found his English, his manners, and his knowledge of the Yorkist court formidable. [18]

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Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, also believed in the Pretender. In the preface to her novel The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, A Romance, she states:

 

“It is not singular that I should entertain a belief that Perkin was, in reality, the lost Duke of York. For in spite of Hume, and the later historians who have followed in his path, no person who has studied the subject but arrives at the same conclusion. Records exist at the Tower, some well known, others with which those who have access to those interesting papers are alone acquainted, which put the question almost beyond a doubt. This is not the place for a discussion of the question. The principal thing that I should wish to be impressed on my reader’s mind is, that whether my hero was or was not an imposter, he was believed to be the true man by his contemporaries.” [19]

 

Along with Mary Shelley and other novelists, there are a number of professional historians and scholars who believe that Richard III did not murder his nephews; that he did indeed send the younger prince abroad for safety; that the child survived to adulthood and that the so-called “Perkin Warbeck” was indeed the son of King Edward IV. In The Rose of York: Fall from Grace, my novelized version of events, offers a scenario for how his survival may have been accomplished using a page-boy substitution for the younger prince in the Tower. [20] Philippa Gregory, a novelist with a Ph.D., comes to a similar conclusion in The White Queen, published a year later. She explains her reasons:

 

"Then there is the historical evidence. A very interesting book by Ann Wroe, Perkin, suggested to me that the so-called pretender Perkin Warbeck might well have been the surviving prince, Richard. Her case for it is very compelling, as others have suggested too. There is other persuasive evidence that both boys were not killed as the traditional history (and Shakespeare) suggests. Even the traditional history—of them being suffocated in their beds in the Tower and buried beneath a stair—is filled with contradictions. If Perkin was Richard—and this is speculative history, as indeed all history around this genuine mystery must be—then Richard must have somehow survived." [21]

 

No discussion of the murder of the princes would be complete without a word about Sir Thomas More since he was the first to suggest in The History of the Reign of King Richard III that the princes had been murdered and to identify the culprit. Cardinal Morton is given as the source of More’s information that Sir James Tyrell confessed to the murder of the princes in the Tower before his execution. According to John Morton’s biographer, the bishop “made the Tudor dynasty” and also made Sir Thomas More, to whom he gave the History of King Richard the Third that More claimed as his own work. [22] No one mentioned a confession before More did, and no record of one survives. Strangely, while the Pretender was a captive at Henry’s court, Tyrrell was in Henry’s good graces, alive and flourishing in Calais. Yet More’s account quickly became the accepted story of what had happened to Richard, Duke of York.

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In the History, More-Morton states that Tyrrell confessed to the murder before his execution. Since Morton died in 1500, and Sir James Tyrrell, supposedly the confessed murderer of the princes, was not picked up until 1501, Morton’s knowledge of the crime was premature and could only have come as a result of his own guilt. [23]

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That Henry VII believed the Pretender was genuine seems to be the case. As late as September, 1497, he still referred to him as the Duke of York. [24] He would not give him up even for the astounding terms offered by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian which included renouncing—in perpetuity—for himself and “his cousin of York, and all their heirs and successors” all rights in the kingdom of England. Although plagued by massive financial troubles, Maximilian offered enormous riches to anyone close to Henry VII who could persuade Henry to surrender the Pretender. When these efforts failed, Maximilian hoped to organize an invasion of England to free him. He abandoned his plans only when civil war broke out in his own kingdom.

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In spite of these threats and offers, Henry VII would not relinquish the Pretender, even when the Pretender, broken, beaten, and exposed as a coward, no longer posed any viable threat to him. Nor would Maximilian abandon his efforts to gain the Pretender’s release long after he could gain any political advantage for himself, and even at his great personal expense.

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Fearing a second generation from the Pretender, Henry did not allow him to sleep with his wife. The Pretender’s escape from the Tower caused Henry genuine distress, and on his recapture, he engaged in a strange drama of sending him to “Purgatory” for two days, and delivering him to “Hell” on the third.

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In reference to the Pretender’s escape, it is interesting to note that he chose to escape from the Tower. [25] This may have been due to the proximity of that fortress to the sea, but if he were the true prince, it may have owed more to the psychological terrors that the Tower held for him. [26] In the end, the Tower proved to be the Pretenders “hell” in many ways, not least of which was the punishment he suffered within its walls. Given the vengeful nature of the Tudor monarchs, it is best not to speculate here what Henry VII would have considered a fitting end to the little drama of “hell” that he devised for the captive who was his rival both in love and war. Whether or not the scenario offered in Pale Rose of England happened can never be known, but Henry VII’s agony of mind during the Pretender’s escape from the Tower was noted at the time. The disfigurement mentioned by the Spanish ambassador and the ambassador’s shock that anyone could change so dramatically in so short a time also suggests some great violence. Henry’s fear of the Pretender politically led him to break the bones of his face so he would not resemble his father when he was brought out for execution. In the same vein, his need to eliminate the danger of a second generation in the event of a future escape, and his jealousy of the Pretender’s claim on Lady Catherine’s affections, might have driven him to complete the Pretender’s “hell” in a suitable manner.

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The difference in Henry VII’s behavior with regard to Lambert Simnell and the Pretender indicates his different view of them. With Simnell, he used straightforward and reasonable methods to prove him an imposter and allowed him to lead a normal life, but with the Pretender, his cruelty and inexplicable behavior suggests that he considered him a viable threat to his throne. An obvious fraud could never have engendered such fear.

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Most conveniently for the Tudors, Henry’s captive, Elizabeth Woodville, the mother of the princes, died in 1492 as soon as the news first broke that one of her sons was alive, eliminating any possibility of a definitive verification of his identity. Queen Elizabeth of York might have done so in her mother’s stead, but the Pretender was never allowed to confront any of the princesses who might have been his sisters. Neither did he confront Sir James Tyrell who Sir Thomas More later claimed had murdered the two princes in the Tower. 

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It is generally accepted that the Tudors were ruthless and had little compunction about eliminating those who stood in their way. Since Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain considered the Pretender to be the Duke of York, they would not have sent their daughter to England without the death of the one they considered the legitimate heir of Edward IV. Henry VII executed Edward, earl of Warwick, and “Perkin Warbeck” within five days of one another. He aged twenty years in a fortnight as a result and fell so ill he was not expected to live. This has generally been attributed to his execution of young Warwick, but the sin of regicide would have taken a heavy toll, if as suggested, Henry believed the Pretender was the true prince.

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As a foreigner, the Pretender could not be pardoned his offenses since he didn’t owe Henry VII an oath of fealty. Instead, he was “pardoned of life”, with no paper record needed, like a prisoner of war. Yet, he was executed as a traitor at Tyburn. To quote Ricardian scholar Wendy  Moorhen, “It is ironical, or even an indication of King Henry’s true belief of Warbeck’s origins, that he was condemned as a traitor. Warbeck’s confession made him a native of the low countries and, therefore, a subject of the duke of Burgundy. How could he be considered a “traitor” to the King of England, unless he was born an Englishman?” [27]

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Henry VII ‘s choice of burial place for the Pretender is also curious. He was said to have been buried in the Austin Friars on Bread Street, but the Austin Friars was reserved for executed nobility. It could be said that there was an error in the records, since the Austin Friars was located on Broad Street, not Bread Street, and it was Bread Street that was meant, not the Austin Friars. There were two churches on Bread Street where commoners were interred: All Hallows and St. Mildred's, and it would have been strange not to name one of these churches instead of the street. It is specifically the Austin Friars that was mentioned as the Pretender’s place of internment, and that church is on Broad Street, easily confused with Bread Street.

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A seventeenth-century chronicler listed all those interred at the Austin Friars before the dissolution of the monasteries, and found no record of the Pretender. Assuming the Pretender was buried at the Austin Friars, why was a boatman’s son buried with nobility, and why was his grave left unmarked? Did Henry VII hope no one would notice that a low-born commoner shared a resting place with nobility if his grave was unmarked? Curiously, neither did Henry VII identify Richard III’s grave at the Grey Friars in Leicester, choosing to leave it unmarked. Thus, a legitimate Yorkist king lay in an unmarked grave in a friary, as did the one who claimed to be a legitimate Yorkist prince.

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There is, of course, yet another possible explanation for an unmarked grave. There was a belief among the people of Scotland that their chivalrous king, James IV, brought his friend Prince Richard back to rest in the royal vault at Cambuskenneth Abbey. In the end, any of these interpretations further enhances the idea that the Pretender was the legitimate prince.

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“Perkin Warbeck” came to fight for a crown but he came without an army, and he came bringing his family. Either he was astoundingly dim-witted, and so were the crowned heads of Europe who supported him, or he was the genuine prince gambling that all he had to do was show himself to his people and they would know him. An imposter would never have dared what this young man dared. In his courage in coming alone to claim his father’s crown, I find final confirmation that he had to be who he claimed he was.

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Mary Shelley makes the following observation: “The various adventures of this unfortunate prince… and his alliance with a beautiful and high-born woman, who proved a faithful, loving wife to him, take away the sting from the ignominy which might attach itself to his fate; and make him, we venture to believe, in spite of the contumely later historians have chosen, in the most arbitrary way, to heap upon him… a hero to ennoble the pages of a humble tale.” [28]

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Perkin’s widow, Lady Catherine Gordon, a royal cousin of James IV and a princess of Scotland, believed utterly in her husband and stood by him with unquestioning loyalty until his death in 1499 and even afterwards. Though Henry Tudor wooed her with gifts and poetry, and probably offered her far more, she would have none of it. [29] When confronted by Henry VII with the accusation that her husband was a fraud, she is reported to have said, “It is the man and not the king I love.” On his death bed, Henry VII bequeathed her a large estate at Fyfield with a manor house that is extant and now in private hands.

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Perkin Warbeck and Lady Catherine were thought to have had a one year old son who would on account of his mother’s blood have been a prince of Scotland. Yet he was never returned to that country. If he existed, he seems to have disappeared.  Henry VII would have likely regarded the child as a threat to his throne. The most secure region of the country for Henry VII to hide him away would have been Wales. Interestingly, the Perkins of Reynoldston and Rhossilli-Gellis in Wales traced their descent back to the Pretender. If they knew their ancestry in the nineteenth century, they must have known it in the sixteenth. Lady Catherine Gordon herself settled for a time in Swansea, ten miles away from Rhossilli-Gellis. Such a remarkable coincidence cannot be insignificant.

 

After Richard’s death, Lady Catherine befriended his sister Cecily, and Cecily’s daughter, Margaret Kymbe, whom she referred to with the royal terminology of “cousin.” This kinship could only have come through Richard. As noted by Ricardian scholar Wendy Moorhen, it is indeed strange that two of Lady Catherine’s four husbands were involved in efforts to depose Tudor monarchs. [30] That she believed her husband “Perkin Warbeck” was Richard of York, there seems little doubt. She persuaded her other husbands of it, and wore black to the end of her life.

 

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1 Francis Bacon, ed. F. J. Levy, The History of the Reign of King Henry VII; Bobs-Merril Company, New York; p. 151, and Ann Wroe, The Perfect Prince: The Mystery of Perkin Warbeck and His Quest for the Throne of England. New York: Random House, 2003; p. 397.

2 Wroe, Ann, THE PERFECT PRINCE

3 Wroe, 397. Comment is attributed to Jean Molinet.

4 Wroe, see p. 407, and pp. 412-413. In his letter to his mother on October 13th, 1497, from custody in Exeter, the Pretender signed himself  Pierrequin Wezbecq.  “Wezbecq,” was a Flemish-French play on words, with the Flemish “wezen” meaning real, and “weze” meaning orphan. To quote Wroe, “This was the orphan Perkin speaking.”  

5 Bacon, pp. 152-153

6 Wroe, p. 59. Rui de Sousa, councilor to the King of Portgual was besotted by the singing of the seven-year old prince.

7 Wroe, p. 109

8 Wroe, pp. 392-420

9 Wroe, pp. 392-393

10 Wroe, p. 409

11 Wroe, pp. 417-418

12 Wroe, p. 419

13 Wroe,  p. 518

14 Pollard, A.J., Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, p. 120, states that the similarities in More’s tale to the story of the Babes in the Wood powerfully suggests a literary rather than factual inspiration. Pollard is worth reading for a review of the case against Richard III.

15 Bacon, p.82a

16 For more discussion of this matter, see p. 97 in this book. Also see Peter Hammond’s Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law pp. 104-147. This comprehensive and detailed academic study re-examines the forensic examination of 1934 and the evidence for the deaths of the princes. It is noted that the examiners of 1934 by their own admission presumed throughout the investigation that the bones were male and those of the princes.  However, evidence is found to suggest the origin of the bones is likely female. Other finds of “Princes” bones prior to the “authentic” find in 1674 are also discussed. Audrey Williamson’s Mystery of the Princes, a Gold Dagger Award winner, offers a very interesting and readable account of the subject and presents a convincing case for the survival of the younger prince, pp. 161-173. Diana Kleyn’s Richard of England, pp. 36-48, discusses the discovery of the other bones at the Tower thought to have been the princes and presents reasons why the bones in the urn could not be theirs. Kleyn also lists further reading on the subject. Bertram Fields offers a clear and insightful analysis in Royal Blood, pp. 238-257. Also see Paul Murray Kendall, Richard the Third, pp. 465-495.  

17 Wroe, p. 399

18 Wroe, p. 397

19 Shelley, Mary, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, A Romance, published 1830; reprint by Kessinger Publishing, p.3. The documents at the Tower that Mary Shelley she refers to have not been mentioned by other sources. They may be waiting to be discovered, or they may have been destroyed, or lost.

20 Worth, Sandra, The Rose of York: Fall from Grace, End Table Books; 2007; the third book in a trilogy of three stand-alone novels.

21 “Conversation with Philippa Gregory,” from philippagregory.com, January 2010

22 Woodhouse, p. vi

23 Tyrrell was beheaded in 1502. His confession, if it happened, was never made public, except in More’s History of the Reign of King Richard III which remained unfinished and was not published until fifteen years after his death.  Archbishop Morton is given as the source of More’s information.

24 Wroe, p. 407

25 Wroe, Ibid, p. 455

26 Wroe, Ibid, p. 449. As his biographer notes, the question of why he escaped seemed unanswerable, since he had to know Henry would track him down and kill him.

27 Moorhen, Wendy,  Four Weddings and a Conspiracy, Part 1”, THE RICARDIAN, p. 418

28 Shelley, p. 4

29 Wroe, Ann, THE PERFECT PRINCE, falling for Catherine and caring for her, 265, 373-378, 435, 450-451.

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