Henry was growing sick, perhaps with frustration and fear. The bills of his various apothecaries were seven times larger than before. He made a treaty with Charles VIII, who was himself eager to avoid war over the matter of Brittany; one of the clauses of the treaty stipulated that Charles would not harbour any of Henry’s enemies. Warbeck then promptly crossed the border and made his way to the court of Margaret of Burgundy at Malines. ‘I recognized him,’ she wrote, ‘as easily as if I had last seen him yesterday.’ Others from the old court of Edward IV also claimed to know him, almost by instinct. He was now being called by Margaret of Burgundy the White Rose, the pure and fragrant emblem of the Yorkists.
The duchess also ensured that he acquired wealthy and influential allies. He was sent to the funeral of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III, in Vienna where he met the great and the good; among them was Frederick’s son, Maximilian, who now had command of the entire Habsburg Empire. Maximilian and the White Rose became fast friends. The pretender was soon coining silver groats in his own name; his armed guard was dressed in red and blue.
But Henry had not been idle. The danger was too acute for that. He applied trade sanctions against the Burgundian territories, where Warbeck was being sheltered. English goods, and in particular English cloth, were in turn barred from the Netherlands and elsewhere. The financial consequences were severe for merchants and workers on both sides, but the dynastic struggle took priority over economic affairs. Henry had also spent much money in trying to learn of Perkin Warbeck’s real origins, and his envoys in Europe were now busily retailing the facts of his supposedly baseborn family.
The king feared that an invasion was imminent; he sent as many ships as he could find to patrol the seas along the Suffolk coast and ordered troops to guard the principal ports of the realm. He asked his supporters to supply men-at-arms who would be ready to fight at a day’s notice.
He had spies in Warbeck’s entourage also, listening to every conversation. It was said of the king that he handled every case ‘circumspectly and with convenient diligence for inveigling, and yet not disclose it to the party … but keep it to himself and always grope further’. It was discovered that small clusters of Yorkist supporters, in Calais and Suffolk and elsewhere, were ready to rise on behalf of the claims of ‘Richard Plantagenet’. Some of them were still working at Henry’s court and in Henry’s household. This was the moment to arrest and imprison them.
The most senior conspirator turned out to be in fact Henry’s chamberlain, Sir William Stanley, the man who had engineered the king’s victory at Bosworth. At his subsequent trial he was alleged to have said that ‘if he knew for sure that the young man were King Edward’s son, he would never bear arms against him’. Under other circumstances these would be unexceptionable sentiments but, in Henry’s reign, the words meant a traitor’s death.
On 3 July 1495, the White Rose and his mercenary army landed at Deal in Kent; but the invasion proved abortive. The forces of the pretender were overwhelmed, and Warbeck retreated to the relative safety of the seas. His captured soldiers were marched to Newgate or the Tower. Henry could draw even more comfort from the fact that the English had not rallied to Warbeck’s banner; they had remained unexcited by his landing and unwilling to support him.
Warbeck had been rebuffed, but he sailed on to the old Yorkist haven of Ireland. He made the unlucky choice of Waterford as his point of entry, where the citizens actively resisted any attempt to enlist them into his war. For a few months he wandered through Ireland, a putative king without a kingdom, living in secrecy and fear. His fortune changed once again, however, when he was invited or invited himself to the court of James IV in Edinburgh. The young king of Scotland – approximately Warbeck’s own age – was happy to take up any opportunity of embarrassing and weakening the old enemy of England. Warbeck provided the occasion. He arrived in the winter of 1495 and was greeted by the Scots as a conquering hero. He received more than promises, however; he obtained a bride. A close relative of the Scottish king, Katherine Gordon, was betrothed to him. She was not exactly a princess, but she was the next best thing.
