So the White Rose and the Scottish king, now cousins by marriage, set about the invasion of England. James IV may have had in mind one of the border wars by which Anglo-Scottish hostilities were conducted, with the assumption that the English would then rise up in support of young Richard IV. Henry himself could not be sure of the outcome. He prepared to muster a force of 20,000 men, and launch a navy of seventy ships against the Scots; to widespread and furious resentment, he levied taxes and forced loans to pay for the proposed expedition. In the event the invasion proved to be a fiasco, and the White Rose professed himself to be horrified by the bloody depredations of the Scottish troops before they fled back over the border. Once again he was seen to be an unlucky prince.
He lingered in Scotland for a few more months, feeling increasingly unwelcome at the court of James IV, before venturing everything on another English assault. With his wife and a few supporters he sailed to Cornwall by way of Ireland. He had been informed that an army of Cornish rebels was waiting to greet him in the southwest of England, the men of Cornwall having marched a few months before towards London in protest against what they considered to be unjust taxation. They had been joined by men from the other western counties, all of them refusing to pay for the war against the Scots. Why should they finance a distant struggle in which they had no part? Like many such rebels, however, they marched as far as Blackheath before their leaders were cut down. Another opportunity now presented itself. They believed that they had found a leader of royal blood.
Once more Warbeck was singularly unsuccessful; some men from Devon and Somerset joined him, but the town of Exeter refused him entry. His followers, tired and hungry, began to desert his army; the king sent messengers among them, promising them pardons if they laid down their arms. Warbeck, sensing defeat, fled for sanctuary to the abbey at Beaulieu. Henry surrounded the church, and the pretender was persuaded to surrender. He came out of sanctuary dressed in cloth of gold, but his pride was soon extinguished. He was taken back to London, a trumpeter riding before him to blow mock flourishes into the air, where his confession was published. It is likely to have been written by the king’s councillors, and to have borne as little relation to the truth as his original claim. Several versions of his life were soon circulating in England and in Europe. No one really knew the facts of his origin or his upbringing; it is possible that he was chosen for his role at an early age, and then brought up in the court of Margaret of Burgundy herself. It was said at the time that he was in fact an illegitimate son of Edward IV. Henry himself professed to believe that he was the illegitimate child of Margaret and a local bishop. Perkin is still wrapped in mist.
His end was in plain sight, however. He escaped from his guards at the palace of Westminster, where he seems to have been living as the king’s confined guest, but was recaptured. He was then consigned to the Tower, the guest of the king in a more oppressive sense, where he lingered for more than a year. Yet the fears and the suspicions of the king still surrounded him. He was accused of plotting treason with another prisoner, none other than the young earl of Warwick who had been impersonated by Lambert Simnel. The king now took the convenient opportunity of killing the two young men who threatened his throne. Warbeck was hanged, and Warwick beheaded.
The earl of Warwick had been imprisoned, and killed, for the sole offence of being the Yorkist heir. He was an innocent and, in detention for fifteen years, it was said that he ‘could not discern a goose from a capon’. He had to die all the same. A happier postscript may be found in the welcome provided to Perkin’s young wife; Katherine Gordon settled down in the English court, and eventually remarried.
Henry was now believed to be securely placed upon the throne. ‘This present state,’ the Milanese ambassador reported, ‘is most stable even for the king’s descendants, since there is no one who aspires to the crown … His Majesty can stand like one at the top of a tower looking on what is passing in the plain.’ The view from the tower is, of course, different from the view on the plain where there may be discordance and resentment. Two Spanish envoys suggested as much when they concluded that the king ‘has established good order in England, and keeps the people in such subjection as has never been the case before’.
