About the year of our Lord 1496, when James IV. King of Scotland, upon
a truce with King Henry VII. of England, had expulsed from Scotland
that counterfeit sham Prince, Perkin Warbeck (the pretended Richard of
Shrewsbury, youngest son of King Edward IV. who had before been
murdered in the Tower), to whom he had given in marriage his near
kinswoman the Lady Katherine Gordon; he, together with his wife and
family, sailed from thence over into Ireland, to seek friendship there
of the rebels and all others well affected to the House of York; where
being arrived, and fortune favouring him according to his expectation,
news was brought him there that the Cornish rebels were ready to renew
their former hostility, and venture their lives in battle upon the
title of the house of York against that of Lancaster, had they a
valiant and able General to lead them, notwithstanding Flammock and
his confederates under the same engagement were defeated and executed
in 1495.
These tidings were very acceptable to Perkin; who thereupon consulted
his privy councillors, Hearn, Astley, and Skelton, a mercer, a tailor,
and a scrivener, all bankrupts; these all agree, nemine contradicente,
that his four ships of war should forthwith be rigged and manned for
an expedition into Cornwall; which accordingly being prepared, himself
with his lady, and 120 soldiers, embarked thereon, and being favoured
with a fair wind, took his leave of his Irish friends, and in the
month of September, 1499, 15th Henry VII. (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall,
p. 98,) came safely to anchor in St. Michael’s Mount’s Bay; where soon
after he landed, and went up to the Mount, and made himself known to
the monks and other inhabitants, publishing himself to be the true and
real Richard of Shrewsbury aforesaid, the true heir of the House of
York; which the monks, greatly affected to that title, were so very
ready to believe, that they yielded the Mount and garrison without
resistance into his hands; who presently renewed the old
fortifications, and put the same into a better posture of defence.
Which having done, himself with a band of soldiers marched from thence
to Bodmin (where the rendezvous of Flammock’s rebels in those parts
formerly was,) in which place, by false words and promises, he so
prevailed with the discontented rebels of that town and contiguous
country, that he soon got together, without money or reward, at least
three thousand men that could bear arms; these he divided into
companies, and bands, and regiments, under Captains, Majors, and
Colonels expert in war to instruct them in military discipline, till
at length his army grew to six thousand well-armed soldiers. Whereupon
King Henry VII. having notice of Perkin’s landing and formidableness
in these parts, ordered Sir Peter Edgecombe, Knight, then Sheriff of
Cornwall (whose father, Sir Richard Edgecombe, Knight, was one of that
King’s Privy Councillors, and had comparatively been raised to his
great estate by his boon and favour), that he should forthwith, by
virtue of his office, raise the country, and give battle to this
counterfeit Richard of Shrewsbury and his confederate rebels.
Whereupon, the Sheriff did as he was commanded, and raised an army of
twenty thousand men, as tradition saith, and led them towards Bodmin;
but when they approached near, and saw Perkin entrenched at Castle
Keynock, on the east hill of Bodmin Downs, with the body of his army,
and divers troops of horse and bands of foot placed towards Lanhydrock
and the roads from Cardenham, in order to resist and oppose the
Sheriff, his men resolved to march no further, but to return from
whence they came without giving battle. Which accordingly they did
(notwithstanding the Sheriff’s threats and commands to the contrary),
in great terror and confusion and astonishment; but whether this fear
proceeded from the cowardice of the Sheriff and his men, or their
disaffection to the Lancastrian dominion of King Henry, is uncertain,
for the like fact was committed two years before by the posse
comitatus of John Basset, of Tehidy, then Sheriff, which he had raised
to suppress Flammock’s rebellion.
Upon news of this flight and disbanding of the Sheriff’s men, Perkin
was saluted by his soldiers and confederates as King of England: and
soon after, not only in his camp, but in divers places of Bodmin town,
was proclaimed by a trumpeter and others, King of England and France,
and Lord of Ireland, with great shouts and acclamations of the people,
and bonefires, by the name of Richard IV. And it is reported he
assumed majesty with such a boon grace and affable deportment, that
immediately he won the affections and admiration of all who made
addresses unto him; in which art of kingship he had long before been
educated and instructed by his pretended aunt, Margaret Duchess of
Burgundy, sister to King Edward IV. which he had also acted to the
good liking of all that saw him in Burgundian, Irish, Scots, and
French courts. And, moreover, besides his magisterial port and mien,
being an incomparable counterfeit, natural crafty, liar and
dissembler, “Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare,” as the old
proverb saith; so that in short time he grew to be so popular and
formidable about Bodmin that no power durst oppose him there. But,
alas! this Cornish regniculum gave him not content, for his pride and
ambition put him upon further expedients, viz. to get possession of
the whole kingdom of England, and reduce it also to his obedience; in
order to which, with a well-prepared army of four thousand men and two
thousand of other sorts, he marched out of Cornwall into Devon, where
met him also great numbers of volunteers of that county and Somerset,
that joined with his forces; the dread whereof so terrified James
Chudleigh, Esq. then Sheriff of Devon, and the power of his bailiwick
raised to stop his march to Exeter, that they durst not give him
battle or obstruct his passage till he came before that city, pitched
his camp, and laid siege thereto.
Upon whose approaches the citizens shut their gates and prepared to
defend themselves; when soon after he sent a message or summons to
them in the name of Richard IV. King of England, commanding them to
surrender the same to him upon their allegiance: but the citizens so
ridiculed his pretended title, and slighted his summons, that by his
own messenger they gave him defiance; at which time Dr. Richard Redman
was Lord Bishop of Exeter; William Burgoigne, Esq. Recorder; William
Frost, Mayor; Francis Gilbert, Sword-bearer; John Bucknam, William
Wilkinson, John Doncaster, and Richard Howse, were Stewards, or
Bailiffs; John Clodworthy, John Bonifant, Philip Bullock, John Wilkin,
Nicholas Auburne, John Atwell, William York, Thomas Lanwordaby, Philip
Binks, John Slugg, Thomas Andrews, Thomas Oliver, and others,
Aldermen. See Isaack’s Memorials of Exeter, 1499.
Soon after this defiance given, Perkin and his soldiers surrounded the
city walls, and attempted to scale the same in several places daily
for some time, but always were repulsed with considerable loss by the
valour of the citizens. During which siege they sent to King Henry for
his aid and assistance in this great distress; whereupon the Lord
Daubeny was ordered to raise forces and march towards Exeter
therewith, in order to remove the siege thereof; but before he came,
Edward Courtenay, sixteenth Earl of Devon, and the Lord William his
son, accompanied with Sir Edmund Carew, Sir Thomas Fulford, Sir
William Courtenay, Sir John Halwell, Sir John Croker, Walter
Courtenay, Peter Edgecombe, William St. Maur, Richard Whiteleigh of
Efford (Sheriff of Devon the year after), Richard Hals of Kenedon,
John Fortescue of Vallapit, James Chudleigh aforesaid, and other
gentlemen of those parts, had raised a considerable army of soldiers,
with which they marched towards the rebels. At the sight of whose
approach Perkin and his host were as much dispirited then as they were
elevated before; whereupon he called a council of war, in which it was
unanimously agreed upon, that it was not advisable to give them
battle, being at least ten thousand fighting men, but to dislodge from
their trenches, and leave the siege of that place, and forthwith to
march into Somersetshire, a country better affected to King Perkin,
where he might raise more soldiers. Accordingly, this order of council
was observed and put in practice, so that the night after Perkin and
all his army marched towards Taunton; where he mustered his men as if
he intended to give battle; but when, by the muster-roll, he saw what
numbers of men had deserted him in his nightly march from Exeter,
falling then much short of six thousand, and further, notice being
brought him that King Henry was in pursuit of him with a much greater
army, he foresaw the worst, and doubted that fortune would favour him
no longer in his military and regal practices; and therefore
contrived, for the preservation of himself, with sixty horse troopers,
to forsake his army by night, and fly to the Abbey of Beauley, in
Southampton, as resting upon the name and privilege of the place,
where he took sanctuary. As soon as King Henry understood Perkin had
deserted his soldiers and had taken sanctuary at Beauley, he forthwith
ordered a band of soldiers to guard and surround that Abbey to prevent
his escape beyond the seas (from whence it appears that at that time
the privilege of sanctuary was allowed to traitors). So that Perkin,
despairing of getting thence, submitted to the King’s mercy, and was
committed prisoner to the Tower of London; from whence he made an
escape, and fled to the Priory of Sheen, at Richmond; where, on
condition of making a true confession who he was, in a pair of stocks
set before Westminster Hall door, and true answer make to such
questions as should be demanded of him, the Prior got the King’s
pardon for him. And accordingly, he sat in the stocks a whole day
before Westminster Hall door, afterwards on a scaffold in Cheapside,
openly reading, declaring, and giving manuscripts under his own hand,
wherein he told his parentage, the place of his birth, the passages of
his life; that he was a cheat, an impostor, and by what ways and means
he was drawn into those treasonable and bloody attempts and practices,
&c. After which he was again committed to the Tower of London, where
endeavouring to make an escape, he was afterwards, with others,
executed at Tyburn.
After Perkin took sanctuary at Beauley, his soldiers from about
Taunton and elsewhere, were all brought to Exeter; where King Henry,
in St. Peter’s church-yard, pardoned them all, on their promise of
being good subjects afterwards. But some of them were not so good as
their word. King Henry also then sent the Lord Daubeny to St.
Michael’s Mount for Perkin’s wife, the Lady Katherine Gordon, whom he
brought to King Henry; who commiserating her youth, birth, and beauty,
bestowed a competent maintenance upon her, which she enjoyed during
that King’s life and long after, to her dying day.