MEDIEVAL Skulduggery

 Henry Tudor took the throne by right of conquest at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. This was largely only because at the last minute the Stanleys took his side and some clever miliary tactics by one of the Earls on the Lancastrian side.

The last rightful king of England, Richard III, was slaughtered on that battlefield and his body was treated ignominiously. So much so that, possibly for the first time in English history, nobody knew where the body of this King of England lay, until 2015.

Henry Tudor was a complete outsider, brought up abroad by his uncle Jasper Tudor, he barely spoke English , his father having died before he was born, his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort  just a girl of 12 when she bore him. She  became the queen of England in all but name  and created her own title, My Lady the King's Mother. She was the power behind the throne of her son Henry Tudor , Henry VII

Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor, was born circa n 1441, the daughter of Margaret Beauchamp of Bletsoe  by her 2nd husband John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, who was a grandson of John of Gaunt and his mistress Kathryn Swynford. Her grandfather, John Beaufort ,born illegitimate  was legitimised by his parents marriage in 1396. The legitimisation carried a condition that their descendants were barred from inheriting the throne.

Margaret Beaufort  was her father's only legitimate child and the heiress to the vast wealth of the Duchy of Lancaster.

She seems to have been a very driven lady , one of extreme ambition, obsession and piety, with more than a hint of ruthlessness, who created the short lived Tudor dynasty of 119 years .  It was her obsessive devotion to her son Henry Tudor, to God and the idea that he should be king, that launched the Tudor dynasty . As a medieval lady , like many highborn ladies Margaret was a victim of parental ambition that amounted to abuse and she  in turn became an abuser of power.  She had two half-brothers and three half-sisters from her mother, Margaret Beauchamp's, marriages. Her mother Margaret Beauchamp  married 3 times. Her 1st husband was Sir Oliver St John  by whom she had two sons and five daughters; 2nd  husband was John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, by whom she had one daughter Margaret Beaufort and mother of Henry Tudor;3rd was to  Lionel de Welles, 6th Baron Welles by whom she had one daughter.

When she was a baby of 1 year old Margaret Beaufort's wardship was granted, by Henry VI, to his half-brothers, Jasper and Edmund Tudor.  Margaret Beaumont  had  at least 2 arranged unions of her four marriages . She  produced only one child. 

 'Married ' 1st as a baby was to John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, that was annulled. She was not bound by the marriage contract because it was entered into before she was 12.2nd marriage was on 1 November 1455 when she was age of  12, she was married to the 28 year old Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond . Edmund Tudor died in November 1456 , some 2 months before his son son Henry Tudor born on  28 January 1457.  The 13-year-old  pregnant widow seems to have been  taken under the wing of by her brother in law  Jasper Tudor, who took charge of his nephew, Henry Tudor, training him and protecting him. Henry Tudor came to the throne not through inheritance but by force of arms. Having a child at the age of 12 or 13 probably did so much damage to her undeveloped body that it made another pregnancy unlikely.

 3rd marriage in 1458  to  Sir Henry Stafford  second son of  and Lady Joan Beaufort and Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Anne Neville, daughter of Ralph de Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland.  Henry fought for the Lancastrian side at the Battle of Barnet where he was seriously wounded He was not able to  London with the victorious army. He never recovered from his wounds and died in his bed on 4 October 1471. 

 4th   Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby in 1472.  Margret made a celibate marriage with Stanley in 1472  & the Stanleys who apparently supported the Yorkists betrayed Richard III at Bosworth and  Henry Tudor took the crown. Thomas died in 1504

During her marriage to Stanley Lady Margaret, who preferred living alone, took a vow of chastity with her husband's consent.
Once her son Henry was on the throne she,  by her own command, was referred to as My Lady the King's Mother. She became to all intents and purposes Queen of England , supporting her son Henry VII .  He started out as a good monarch, sensible, reasonable and pleasant, but later his behaviour changed drastically and he became irascible, intolerant, violent and tyrannical.

Her half brother was  John (de) Welles, 1st Viscount Welles, KG  born about 1450 to Lionel de Welles, 6th Baron Welles and Margaret Beauchamp. John de  Wells  married Princess Cecily of York, sister to Elizabeth the wife of Henry Tudors .

Fruition  came in 1486 with the birth of their first child, Arthur, born in September that year. The birth of Arthur amalgamated the two rose into one Tudor rose, his son was to be the embodiment of the Tudor regime. 

Henry Tudor married Princess Elizabeth of York  on  18 January 1486; Arthur born 8 months later on 20 September 1486; Elizabeth was crowned on 25 November 1487;  Arthur died 2 April 1502;  Elizabeth died in childbirth 11 February 1503; Henry Tudor died  21 April 1509 and Henry VIII, born June 28, 1491, became king.

SKULDUGERY !

There were two attempts to claim the throne of Henry Tudor by Yorkist faction who had a better and legitimate claim to it. One was was the obviously fake. Lambert Simnell claimed to be Edward, Earl of Warwick.In early 1487 His claim was obviously fake since Edward of Warwick was in fact locked up in the Tower Of London and had been since he was 11 years old.

The other was the mysterious and much more convincing Perkin Warbeck - who claimed to be Richard Duke of York son of the dead Edward IV nephew of Richard III. Henry Tudor was deeply unpopular during his reign, his claim the crown by right of battle gave him and his mother a tenuous hold on the throne, his marriage to Elizabeth of York the sister of the vanished princes used to shore up this fragile claim.She and her siblings had been declared illegitimate by Richard III and by parliament. To make his claim stronger Henry Tudor by marrying  Elizabeth of York he had to reverse their illegitimacy- and  that giving him one HUGE motive for disposing of the two boys.

When Perkin Warbeck appreared for some reason Henry Tudor did not apparently investigate his background. This has given rise to the claim that he may indeed

known Warbeck was the brother of his wife, Elizabeth of York, sister of Richard Duke of York, therefore the  rightful king.

I looked at some the images, one of Richard III  one of Perkin Warbeck or Richard Duke of York and one of Edward IV.

Recent discoveries have brought to light the fact that Edward IV and his brother Richard III may not have had the same father but it seems to me that there is a family likeness between the three faces.

This rather inclines me to believe was Warbeck not an imposter but the real deal, a Prince of the Blood, who was dealt foully with by the usurper Henry Tudor. His sister Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry, may well have been forced to deny her brother !

These men are mentioned in Anne Wroes book on Perkin. John Taylor senior together with John Attwater a merchant and Mayor of Cork , made confession in 1497 regarding the Perkin Warbeck affair.

John Taylor had a son also John, and the senior was a former servant of George, Duke of Clarence brother of King Edward IV. He is difficult to disentangle from his son who was a minor court official for Edward IV , previously a hosier and for 4 years controllers of customs for all the main ports of the West Country.

This is pretty much all I discovered about John Taylor  and a connection with Exeter & Dartmouth but I wonder about the other ports of the West Country, maybe with  Plymouth, and the ports on the north coast of Devon , Bideford and Barnstaple as well the Cornish ports of Fowey, Penryn and Padstow , Falmouth being too small at that time .??? More of that later!

The two Taylors may have worked together for much of the time, although Taylor senior hovers in the background whilst Attwater is the more consistent & committed friend.

Henry VII blamed the two men but not equally, for helping to establish this thorn in his side that Perkin became as Richard Duke of York, second of the vanished sons the the dead Yorkist king Edward IV.

Attwater, when he was captured, was described by Henry VII in a letter to Louise XII of France as ' the prime mover and half inventor ' of the so called imposture. Taylor senior was captured in 1499 and the Milanese ambassador reported that Taylor was the man who tried to take the Boy into Ireland when ' after he first declared himself as son of King Edward.

Attwater's motives were relatively uncomplicated it seems . Like much of England he was and remained a supporter of the Yorkist cause , a worthy local figure, a merchant and committed Yorkist.

Taylor too was a fanatical Yorkist, described as 'a creature of King Edward' a man who would follow any sprig of the White Rose of York. However Taylor as a servant of Clarence his first loyalty was to his son, Edward, Earl of Warwick , who had been 'kept in royal custody' since the execution of his father George for treason by his brother the king Edward IV, in 1478. The boy was also kept in the Tower by Henry Tudor , a threat to the new king's claim and Taylor was involved in conspiracies about little Edward . Rumours circulated that Clarence had wanted to swap his son for another child and send his son to Flanders, much like the later rumours regarding the two little princes, and it was Taylor senior who was tasked to 'disappear the two year old child, Edward of Warwick and take him out of the country, a task that Taylor failed at. It was another case of smuggled innocents when the children might be a danger to rivals.

In 1478 Edward IV made Taylor a forester and bailiff on Clarence s lands in Worcestershire and then 1485 Keeper for Life of the kings park at Morelwood in Gloucestershire.

Taylor junior was employed at court as a yeoman of the chamber before being appointed, in 1481 to the post of Surveyor of the Ports with responsibility for Poole in Dorset, Exeter & Dartmouth ,Plymouth, Fowey and Bridgewater. An important job carrying the power to examine all port records, as well as the power to seize ships and their cargoes. He was also, by 1482 , Keeper of the Seals of Subsidies and Ulnages of Cloth in Devon & Cornwall . ( an ulnage was a measurement by the ell, which was the length from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow.)

These were the high point of the Taylors careers under official favour and after the betrayal of the Yorkist cause at Bosworth they were replaced, Taylor junior within four months. His replacement was John Bonython who was explicitly rewarded for services to Henry Tudor in Brittany where he had spent many years in exile awaiting his chance at the crown.

Taylor junior, under a cloud of incompetence, was sidelined by the new administration, and he was granted a general pardon for an unspecified reasons, in 1489 , yet he remained in England. His father however had high-tailed it to Rouen in Normandy. ( the birthplace of King Edward IV and all the rumours of illegitimacy which surrounded.)

Here Taylor, with consideable ambition, and no doubt not a little resentment, ex- royal servant , ex- bailiff and now expatriate,  soon began  plotting to get Edward , Prince of Wales and now Edward V , onto the throne of England. To this end he made his services available to Charles, King of France. If the king of France wanted to make trouble for Henry Tudor then Taylor was there to help.

John Taylor was captured in September 1499 and was tried and convicted on November 16 with Warbeck. Henry seems to have thought that it was Attwater,rather than the Taylors,  was the instigator. John Attwater & Perkin Warbeck, the rightful king  both confessed at Westminster on the 19th and were hanged at Tyburn on the 23rd. Taylor senior got 10 years in prison and his son was pardoned. Henry Tudor hanged the Pretender, the Boy, the rival to his throne that was so precariously held, because to execute him by beheading him would have given credence to his claim to royal blood.

 The confession of 'Perkin Warbeck'  was filled with detail  and included mentions the Yorkist refugee, John Taylor, as one of the supposed kidnappers loitering on the dockside at Cork . Taylor was in charge of a small fleet, equipped and paid for by the King of France, which had been sent apparently to fetch a Yorkist prince,  with,  in the hold of one of those ships, a suit of precious white armour. Its clear that Richard Duke of York  was expected by Taylor and his supporters.(Note -

White armour would have been polished steel rather than the usual unpolished field armour . Almost certainly not a white enamelled suit of armour as I once suggested to a friend. White armour was of the highest quality & considered more superlative & valuable because of that.

Testing the confession of the young man, made some 6 years after he first appeared in England as Richard Duke of York, against other evidence it is clear that the version that Henry VII made this young man agree to was not what really happened. The 25 year old 'Perkin' was forced to confess in public before he was hung, his confession in exchange for avoiding the agonising and prolonged death by being hung, drawn and quartered.

 There is nothing to prove or disprove that ‘Perkin’ was the prince, however they do raise the distinct possibility that he may have been. There was a story of long sponsorship behind this young man that Henry, for some curious reason, was keen to conceal.

The fact that this young man might have been the brother of Henry's queen Elizabeth of York, seen and recognised by her, would have given Henry problems of a very personal nature. Added to that his reign was still deeply unpopular and uncertain. Did he force his wife to deny her brother, as Phillipa Gregory proposes? Was she maybe threatened with separation from her children and or banishment to a convent? By some accounts Henry Tudor had some kind of deep emotional guilt reaction to his decision and execution of this young man who by all accounts was personable and popular.

To ensure his throne Henry executed every Yorkist with a claim to the Yorkist crown & throne, including Edward Plantagenet Duke of Warwick who, from the age of 10 or so, was been locked up in the Tower of London until he was beheaded in 1499.

Did the 'Boy' realise that he was never going to win and, with a degree of nobility & selfless courage, decide to abandon his cause and take whatever fatal consequences his enemy dealt out ?

The story of ‘Perkin Warbeck’  suggests that this young man’s career neither began, nor proceeded in the way historians would have us believe, but then we all know history is written by the victors.

A thoroughly horrid time, only to be followed by even more horrible times under his son Henry VIII and his daughter Mary .

Lady Catherine Gordon (c. 1474–October 1537) was a Scottish noblewoman and the wife of Yorkist claimant to the Tudor  throne,  Perkin Warbeck, who claimed he was Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York.   She had a total of four husbands, but there are no records that she had any surviving children.

Before 4 March 1497, Lady Catherine Gordon was given in marriage to Perkin Warbeck, who was favored by King James IV of Scotland for political reasons, and who had apparently been courting her since 1495, as a love letter  from him to the very beautiful .see footer ( The lady was reported to be "singularly beautiful" and that Henry VIII "much marvelled at her beauty and amiable countenance, and sent her to London to the Queen". Records of Aboyne (1894), 409-10 & 410 n. .)

The love letters of Lady Catherine has been preserved in the Spanish State Letters, vol, i, p. 78 ( records of Aboyne MCCXXX-MDCLXXXI, ed. Charles Gordon Huntly (Aberdeen: The New Spalding Club, 1894), pp. 409-10) 

 James IV gave Perkin Warbeck a 'spousing goune' of white damask for the wedding at Edinburgh. The celebrations included a tournament. Perkin wore armour covered with purple brocade.  Lady Catherine followed her husband's fortunes and was styled the Duchess of York. 

She was taken prisoner at St. Michael's Mount after Henry's forces routed Warbeck's Cornish army at Exeter in 1497.  On 15 October 1497 there is record of a payment of £7 13s. 4d. to Robert Southwell for horses, saddles and other necessities for the transportation of "my Lady Kateryn Huntleye." 

Perkin her husband  was hanged at Tyburn on 23 November 1499 and Lady Catherine was kept a virtual prisoner by King Henry who placed her in the household of his wife, Elizabeth of York, where she became a favorite lady-in-waiting. Initially, Henry VII paid some of her expenses from his privy purse.

In the privy purse accounts her name was recorded as "Lady Kateryn Huntleye."   Henry VII gave Lady Catherine gifts of clothing.  These clothes included, in November 1501, clothes of cloth-of-gold furred with ermine, a purple velvet gown, and a black hood in the French style. In April 1502, black and crimson velvet for gown and black kersey for stockings; and in November 1502, black satin, and other black cloth, to be trimmed with mink (from her own stock) and miniver, with a crimson bonnet.

On 25 January 1503 Catherine attended the ceremony of marriage between James IV and Margaret Tudor at Richmond Palace. James was represented by the Earl of Bothwell as his proxy. 

In February 1503, Lady Catherine  widow of Perkin Warbeck  was a Mourner at the funeral of Queen Consort Elizabeth of York arriving in a "chair", a carriage, with the Lady Fitzwalter and Lady Mountjoy. The train of her dress was carried by the Queen's mother-in-law the Countess of Derby. ** ( according to Wikipedia)

** This was My Lady the King's Mother" Margaret Beaufort  the King's Mother & Countess of Richmond and Derby  . HOW ODD that the kings mother should carry Katherines train at all but more so if  Perkin was not Prince Richard & the brother of Queen Elizabeth . Should this read the other way round? Catherine carried the train of My Lady the King's Mother ?

Margaret  who added ‘R’ to her signature , was recorded as being reluctant to accept a lower status than the dowager queen, Elizabeth Wydville, or even her daughter-in-law the queen consort, Princess Elizabeth of York . She wore robes of the same quality as the queen consort and walked only half a pace behind her., which would have been the correct courtly protocol . 

 Lady Catherine made the offerings at the masses and with 37 other ladies placed a "pall", an embroidered cloth, on the coffin at Westminster Abbey.  After 1512, Lady Catherine lived at Fyfield Manor, Oxfordshire In 1510, Lady Catherine obtained letters of denization and that same year, on 8 August, was given a grant of the manors of Philberts at Bray, and Eaton at Appleton, both then in Berkshire.  Two years later she acquired along with her husband the manor of 'Fiffhede', Fyfield, and upon surrender of patent of 8 August the three manors were all re-granted to Lady Catherine Gordon with the proviso she could not leave England, for Scotland or other foreign lands, without license. 

Before 13 February 1512, she married James Strangeways of Fyfield, a gentleman usher of the King's Chamber.  The couple endowed a chantry priest to sing for the souls of their parents at St Mary Overie at Southwark in London,   where James Strangeways, James's father was buried. In 1517, she married her third husband, Matthew Craddock of Swansea, Steward of Gower and Seneschal of Kenfig, who died c. July 1531.

 Matthew Craddock's will notes the jewels and silver that Lady Catherine owned before they were married. These included a girdle with a pomander, a heart of gold, a fleur-de-lis of diamonds, and a gold cross with nine diamonds. He bequeathed her an income from the lands of Dinas Powys and Llanedeyrn near Cardiff. 

Her fourth and last husband was Christopher Ashton of Fyfield also then in Berkshire.   She is not recorded as having any surviving children, however, she had two stepchildren by Ashton's previous marriage.

According to biographer David Loades, Lady Catherine was head of Mary Tudor's Privy Chamber until 1530.

When not at Court, Catherine resided at Fyfield Manor, except during her marriage to Craddock when she gained permission to live in Wales.  Catherine made her will on 12 October 1537, and died soon after. She was buried in the church of St Nicholas at Fyfield, with a monument, including brass figures (now lost).  Matthew Craddock had previously erected a chest monument for himself and "Mi Ladi Katerin" with their effigies in St Mary's Church, Swansea. The carved heraldry included emblems of the Gordon and Hay family. Both Catherine's mother and paternal grandmother were members of the Hay family.[ 

Footnote

 The preserved letter to Lady Catherine from ' Perkin Warbeck ' is also an example of the style of this early period:—

 Most noble lady, it is not without reason that all turn their eyes to you; that all admire love and obey you. For they see your two-fold virtues by which you are so much distinguished above all other mortals. Whilst on the one hand, they admire your riches and immutable prosperity, which secure to you the nobility of your lineage and the loftiness of your rank, they are, on the other hand, struck by your rather divine than human beauty, and believe that you are not born in our days but descended from Heaven.

 All look at your face so bright and serene that it gives splendour to the cloudy sky; all look at your eyes so brilliant as stars which make all pain to be forgotten, and turn despair into delight; all look at your neck which outshines pearls; all look at your fine forehead. Your purple light of youth, your fair hair; in one word at the splendid perfection of your person:—and looking at they cannot choose but admire you; admiring they cannot choose love but you; loving they cannot choose but obey you.

 I shall, perhaps, be the happiest of all your admirers, and the happiest man on earth, since I have reason to hope you will think me worthy of your love. If I represent to my mind all your perfections, I am not only compelled to love, to adore and to worship you, but love makes me your slave. Whether I was waking or sleeping I cannot find rest or happiness except in your affection. All my hopes rest in you, and in you alone.

 Most noble lady, my soul, look mercifully down upon me your slave, who has ever been devoted to you from the first hour he saw you, Love is not an earthly thing, it is heaven born. Do not think it below yourself to obey love's dictates. Not only kings, but also gods and goddesses have bent their necks beneath its yoke.

 I beseech you most noble lady to accept for ever one who in all things will cheerfully do as your will as long as his days shall last. Farewell, my soul and consolation. You, the brightest ornament in Scotland, farewell, farewell. See: Records of Aboyne (1894), 409-10..