The Last White Rose (18 page)

The second half of Bernart’s deposition was more plausible. He claimed Kendal had been in touch with the group around Warbeck, alleging that when Perkin first arrived in Flanders one of his followers had written several times to My Lord of St John’s. Bernart had seen some, though not all, of the letters. These reported how ‘the Merchant of the Ruby’ (Perkin), having found that he was unable to sell his wares in Flanders for the right price, was going to try and sell them to the King of the Romans (Maximilian) – meaning, explained Bernart, that Perkin had been unable to find enough money or men in Flanders for his invasion of England. The writer of the letters was a sergeant of the Order of St John, Fra’ Guillemin de Novion, who until recently had held a position in the Grand Prior’s household.

Bernart also said that at a commandery belonging to Fra’ John, Melchbourne in Bedfordshire, livery jackets bearing the Red Rose were stored, but that there were others in the commandery on which White Roses could be sewn. He added that a servant of Guillemin de Novion, called Pietres, had brought letters to the Grand Prior that were written in such a way as to mislead King Henry about where Perkin was going to land. My Lord of St John’s was still receiving messages from Flanders, whose contents he always communicated to Thomas Langton, Bishop of Winchester, John Hussey, Sir Thomas Tyrell and Archdeacon Hussey, even if he did not send them the text.

Two or three times a year, sometimes just after Christmas, related Bernart, My Lord of St John’s was accustomed to visit Sir Thomas Tyrell’s manor house at Avon Tyrell in Hampshire. On one occasion, when the Grand Prior said he had heard that
the late King Edward had been there several times in the old days, Sir Thomas replied that he was quite right and that the king had always ‘made good cheer’ – he hoped, please God, that one day King Edward’s son was going to make no less good cheer. The present royal family had been set up with French money, he added, so there was some hope that another, just as good, might soon be put in its place. Both Bernart and Sir John Tonge were present when this conversation took place. He ended by repeating that all the men he named were implicated in the plot to murder King Henry.

The deposition denouncing the Grand Prior has only survived because it reached Henry. He endorsed it on the back, in his own hand, with the words, ‘
La confession de Bernart de
Vignolles
’. Reading the document, he may well have thought that the plot to poison him was a malicious fabrication, but he took the second part seriously enough. Soon after Bernart sent in his deposition, the authorities raided Clerkenwell and seized Kendal’s private correspondence. They kept five letters, all written by him in April 1496, no doubt because three were addressed to men mentioned in the deposition – two to Guillemin de Novion and one to Stefano Maranecho – and because their meaning is curiously unclear, as if by deliberate design. Yet there was nothing positive to incriminate the Grand Prior, and the king was always loath to take action unless he had convincing evidence in his hands. Nor did he arrest any of the men mentioned in the deposition. Even so, in the circumstances it seems significant that on 1 July Henry issued Kendal with a general pardon for all offences committed before 17 June.
⁵

While it is improbable that the Grand Prior had ever been the centre of a Yorkist cell, there may be an element of truth in the accusation that he was in contact with Warbeck’s circle at some stage during the young man’s first days in Flanders.
⁶
If so, like William Stanley, he and his friends were hedging their bets, just in case Perkin really was the son of Edward IV and a Yorkist restoration took place, but had then changed their
minds in the light of information about his true origins. None of their names seem to have been on the list given to Henry by Sir Robert Clifford.

The spiritual dimension can be overlooked in assessing the secret connections of Fra’ John Kendal and his friends with Yorkism. He was very conscious of the vows he had taken. (In his letters he invariably addresses fellow members of his order as ‘
Spectabilis ac religiose in
Christo frater praecarissime
’ – ‘Most beloved noble and religious brother in Christ’.) Like the clerics mentioned in the affair, such as Bishop Langton or Archdeacon Hussey, and many other clergymen, it is not impossible that Kendal’s attitude towards the young man at Margaret’s court was to some extent dictated by conscience, which made him anxious to find out whether he really was who he claimed to be. Had Kendal become convinced beyond all doubt that this was the Duke of York he might well have fought for him.

In the event, Henry VII took no action against Fra’ John, who resumed his place on the royal council. Such a reliable administrator was too useful to lose. He never discovered that Bernart de Vignolles was a traitor, and the man remained in his service for some time to come, presumably spying on him for the king. Kendal stayed on at Clerkenwell as Grand Prior until his death nearly five years later. If Bernart had denounced him earlier, however, his career might have ended very differently.

Yet King Henry must have noted with considerable unease that at one point someone as respected as Fra’ John had accepted that Perkin really might be the Duke of York. The seizure of the Grand Prior’s correspondence in 1496 shows that despite the failure of the Yorkist invasion, the authorities suspected Warbeck was still being taken very seriously indeed. How many Englishmen remained loyal to the White Rose?

10. March 1496: The Grand Prior Plans to Poison the King

1
.
LP Hen VII
,
op. cit
., II, pp. 318–23. Our only source for this episode is Bernart’s
Depositum
.

2
. G. O’Malley,
The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue 1460–
1565
, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 144.

3
.
Oxford DNB
.

4
. I. Arthurson,
The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy 1491–99
, Stroud, Alan Sutton, 1994, pp. 76 and 232 n. 54.

5
.
The Knights Hospitaller
, pp. 146–50.

6
. A. Wroe,
Perkin, a Story of Deception
, London, Jonathan Cape, 2003, pp. 166–9 and 203–4.

11

September 1497: Cornwall Rises for Richard IV

‘Eight thousand peasants immediately took up arms for him.’

Raimondo de Soncino to the Duke of Milan, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts… at Milan 1385–1618
¹

In September 1497 Andrea Trevisano, ambassador of Venice, sent a report in which he describes an audience with Henry VII at the royal palace of Woodstock. Leaning against a tall chair, the king wore a violet robe lined with cloth of gold and a jewelled collar, a large diamond and a beautiful pearl in his cap. Flanked by the young Prince Arthur and the Duke of Buckingham, he remained standing while the ambassador presented his credentials. Later, the king gave him a private audience lasting for two hours. In Trevisano’s considered opininion, Henry was ‘gracious, grave and distinguished’.
²
Yet despite his apparent serenity, the king must have been a very worried man. He knew that the Yorkists were about to start another rising, and he cannot have forgotten how his own slender chances had been crowned by success in 1485.

‘Perkin Warbeck and his wife were lately set full poorly to sea by the King of Scots,’ Henry informed Sir Gilbert Talbot shortly after this audience, in a letter of 12 September 1497.
³
The cause of the White Rose was fading fast when Perkin set sail from Ayr, yet he had not lost heart, convinced that Ireland remained staunchly Yorkist. He had been asked to return there by Sir James of Ormond, a bastard Butler who was currently up in arms against the head of his family, in the hope that the ‘duke’ might make him Earl of Ormond in his cousin’s place.

But on 9 July 1497 Sir James was ambushed and killed near Kilkenny by a kinsman and old enemy, Sir Piers Ruadh Butler. Sir Piers wrote to the earl shortly after that this ‘great and ancient rebel’ had invited ‘Perkin Warbeck to come lately unto this land for the destruction of the subjects and possessions here of our Sovereign Lord’.
⁴
The death of Sir James ended any hope of Irish support for the ‘duke’. Unaware of this disastrous setback, after a voyage lasting a fortnight, round the north coast of Scotland and against contrary winds, Perkin landed in Ireland on 25 July, either in Kerry or in west Cork. In his letter to Sir Gilbert Talbot, King Henry reports him as landing among the ‘wild Irishry’.

Still on board the
Cuckoo
, Perkin sailed on into the Haven of Cork. Here he learned that his ally Sir James had been killed, while he found a famine-stricken land with both of the FitzGerald earls in a far from welcoming frame of mind. Henry had reappointed Kildare Lord Deputy, as the only man who could rule the country and keep in check its dislike of the Tudor dynasty, while he bought Lord Desmond’s loyalty with customs concessions throughout the south-western ports. In the letter to Talbot, the king says that Perkin ‘would have been taken by our cousins, the Earls of Kildare and Desmond, if he and his said wife had not secretly stolen away’.
⁵

When his ‘two ships and a Breton pinnace’ – in fact the
Cuckoo
– put into Cork harbour, John Atwater warned him of his danger whereupon he abandoned his little flotilla and fled.
Someone revealed that he was making for Cornwall and on 1 August the citizens of Waterford wrote to warn King Henry, their letter reaching him at Woodstock only four days later.

He replied at once, offering a large reward for the fugitive’s capture, but the four big Waterford ships pursuing Perkin failed to catch him. From the Haven of Cork he had gone to an island near Kinsale, guided by the faithful Atwater, who hired a Basque merchant vessel from San Sebastian to take him to safety. Although the Waterford men boarded her shortly afterwards, Perkin managed to evade capture: he hid in a barrel, the crew insisting they had never heard of him, while his enemies did not recognize his wife and friends. What happened next is not entirely clear, but it seems that somehow the Basques brought Perkin back to one or two of his ships that had stolen out from Cork harbour while the Waterford men were busy elsewhere on a false scent.

In his letter to Gilbert Talbot, King Henry explained that Warbeck was still on course for Cornwall, so he had sent Lord Daubeney to organize a reception committee, while Lord Willoughby de Broke had been dispatched ‘with our army on the sea … to take the said Perkin if he return again to the sea’. The king was taking the threat very seriously, adding that he would go there himself if it proved necessary and put down the rebellion, ‘with Our Lord’s mercy’. There is a definite hint of tension. Not only had the Cornish given him a bad fright, but his agents were reporting substantial pockets of Yorkist support all over the West Country.

The Yorkist ships had landed five days earlier, on 7 September, at Whitesand Bay, just a mile away from Land’s End. Perkin went ashore with about 300 supporters. One report says they were of various nationalities, with eighty ‘savage Irishmen’, although it is likely that most were English. Writing to the Bishop of Bath and Wells on 20 September Henry admitted that ‘our commons of Cornwall take his part’, but claimed that two days earlier they had included ‘not one gentleman’.
⁶
This was not strictly true,
however. Humphrey Calwodely of Helland, John Nankevell of St Columb and Walter Tripcony of St Columb, later charged with having invited Perkin to Cornwall, were all gentlemen.