Even after five hundred years, Perkin Warbeck remains one of the more enigmatic figures to play upon the stage of English history. Historians still debate exactly who was this handsome young man who appeared in 1491, at age eighteen or thereabouts, claiming to be Richard of York, the second son of King Edward IV. The world presumed that Richard and his older brother, Edward V—known as the Little Princes in the Tower—perished sometime during the reign of Edward IV’s younger brother Richard III.
Legend has it that the elder of the princes, Edward V, died in the Tower of a fever, but the younger one had been spirited out of the country, and sent to Flanders—by Sir Edward and Lady Katherine Brampton. Brampton was a godson of Edward IV, and a strong Yorkist sympathizer. Perkin Warbeck bore a striking physical resemblance to Edward IV, and was well-versed in life at the English court.
Many historians believe that Warbeck was one of Edward’s many illegitimate children. Others suggest that he was a complete impostor, schooled by the Yorkists at the Court of Margaret of Burgundy to assume the role of Richard, and depose Henry VII. A few believe that Warbeck was indeed the real Richard, who had returned to claim his rightful inheritance.
After giving Henry VII eight uneasy years of insurrection and warfare, Warbeck was captured and sent to the Tower in 1497. Henry then began his systematic reprisals against all members of the royal Plantagenet family. Warbeck, along with Edward, Earl of Warwick, a true claimant to the throne, were executed in November 1499. Both men were in their midtwenties.
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