Perkin

by Ann Wroe

  This information could hardly have come from Perkin or Katherine, who in any case apparently stayed silent. Presumably it came from court gossip. The arrangement seems to have been in place for a while, perhaps from not long after the king had returned to Sheen. They were quite naturally together, as Trevisano described them, with no visible contrast of condition between them. (Skelton later called them Jack and Jill, also implying the lack of difference.) And yet, because the king did not want it, they were not completely a couple again.

  Perkin was of course under guard, and that watch did not relax at night. His minders slept with him, one on either side and probably in the same bed, as Edward, Earl of Warwick’s slept with him in the Tower of London. They made sure not only that he did not escape, but that he did not find Katherine or she him. By forbidding the act of love, Henry had removed the core and reason of their marriage, the ‘sweet due debt of nature’ that couples owed each other. Not to pay that debt, if either side desired it, was a sin against the meaning of the sacrament, and the separation of either party from the bed of the other was seen by the churchmen as a form of divorce. That was why Trevisano mentioned it, in his forthright way. He was the one envoy who, by referring to ‘children’ – more than one, in a marriage barely twenty months old – had suggested how passionate their union was. Now he also implied that, if Henry had not forbidden it, this pretty couple would have ‘loved each other fleshly’ as if nothing had changed between them.

  Perhaps nothing had. They had not chosen to appear together in this corner of a crowded room, yet their togetherness spoke volumes. If Katherine had disowned her husband, Henry would not have put her there. Instead, she had clearly not shaken off her love for him. That he had not lost his love for her was less surprising; if their marriage had been damaged, the fault lay only with him. A line of Skelton’s – ‘Lord, how Perkin is proud of his pea-hen!’ – suggests how he felt, staggered by the fact that, whatever was now said of him, he still had a beautiful and noble wife and could passionately flaunt her. Skelton confirmed Soncino, too: they were a couple about the court, known as one, and evidently still in love, despite everything.

  Katherine’s state of mind is harder to read than her husband’s. She was the highest in rank among the queen’s ladies, holding fifth place among the women at court after the queen, the king’s mother and the two small princesses. In the normal run of the world, a woman of her standing would never be seen with such a man. Yet, by preserving the marriage, she also preserved the duties attached to it. She was bound to obey her husband’s commandment, to show him ‘honour and semblant of love’ and to call him ‘lord’, as all wives called their husbands. So in public, as at that busy reception for the ambassadors, he could naturally take her hand, or touch her cheek to tuck a hair away; he could slip his arm around her waist, his possession, or lean his head on her, or kiss her. She, the earl’s daughter, accepted this from him, the piece of shit from Flanders. She would only have done so because she still believed at least some of the stories he had told her.

  Henry doubtless knew this. His fondness for Katherine disposed him to treat her gently; the meetings with Perkin, and even Perkin’s soft treatment in general, may have stemmed in part from this regard. Yet he could not entirely trust her. Among the six servants he allowed her – the normal number for a duchess – at least some would have been spying on her. This young woman was still politically dangerous, or might be; not least because the slightest public act of love or reverence for her husband was unsettling to a king who could not yet definitively prove that his own story was correct, and her husband’s wrong.

  The prohibition on love-making fitted into this pattern. It was important, first, as proof that Henry had unmanned Perkin. Although the young man might flaunt Katherine around the court, he could not unlace her chemise, uncovering those beautiful breasts, or unfasten her girdle, as Henry himself seemed to dream of doing. She was out of bounds to both of them, and Henry’s prisoner endured the added torment of unattainable desire. But second, the lack of sex removed the fear of more children. There is no knowing what had happened to the one-year-old son, perhaps just learning to toddle in his walking strings and to say ‘papa’ and ‘mama’, who had come with them as a prisoner to London. Later clues suggest that he was separated from them and sent far away, where no misguided hopes could cluster round him. Though the business of the feigned lad had been only an ‘abusion and folly’ in Henry’s eyes, he could not risk the danger of a second generation.

  ii

  Meanwhile, in the gardens at Sheen or in the corridors of Westminster, Henry’s prisoner walked with the appearance of a free man. He could open a window, lean out, breathe the air. He could ride, not simply in shame down Cheapside but in the parks around the palaces, watching the leaves whirl down from the trees and feeling the wind in his face. ‘In court at liberty’, was how the London chronicles described it. Fabyan added that Henry gave Perkin ‘many other benefits which I would ask long time to write’. To him, and to all his contemporaries who mentioned it, this looked like honourable confinement as allowed to captured noblemen. If this was prison, it was little more than every man and woman knew, held fast in the corruptible body and the snares of the world, where God and Death were warders.

  The guards who were assigned to him, Robert Jones and William Smith, were trusted royal servants of long standing. Jones was a sewer of the chamber, the man who supervised the laying of dishes on the king’s private table and tasted his food. Smith had been a page of the chamber and later an usher, handling Henry’s petty cash for him (including, once, paying the royal apothecary out of his own pocket) and receiving, in thanks for the closeness of his service, leases on crown lands and honorary offices in several northern cities. These men were not armed soldiers or sergeants, and probably carried no weapons with which to hurt their ward if he tried to escape. In the rare sightings of him at this bizarre stage of his life, his guards were never mentioned. One Venetian despatch, however, said that he had ‘servants’.

  This sort of quasi-freedom was something Henry himself had known in exile in the 1470s, when the Duke of Brittany had kept him and his uncle at court as useful bargaining chips with England. And it was perhaps not so new to his prisoner, either. Pedro de Ayala, a good observer, thought this had been his condition in Scotland after the abortive raid, James ‘keeping him secure in such a way that you could be certain and sure of him . . . not making trouble’. Falkland, with its high wall of hills, had perhaps been his prison, despite the honourable and happy estate he had kept there. Soncino, too, thought he had ‘escaped’ from Scotland when he left. It seems clear that if he had gone to France or Spain he would have been kept in the same way, in silken chains.

  Henry naturally tried to conceal the lightness of his punishment, pretending that he had captured and imprisoned him as harshly as reason would expect. Perkin was said to be sub custodia Smith and Jones and in prisone; in official attainders he was said to have been taken, captus, in the West Country ‘and afterwards, as the king’s enemy, committed in sure and safe custody in the Tower of London, and kept there as a prisoner’. Molinet certainly believed this, writing that Perkin had been kept in ‘miserable prison’ from the outset, and Maximilian too seemed to have this picture in his head. In fact, the king had done nothing of the kind. Though Vergil said his guards had been tasked never to leave his side, Smith and Jones were hardly formidable or even, at times, attentive.

  It is difficult to know how hard their job was. Their charge’s frame of mind seemed fairly changeable. His first appearances in London suggested the same high-spiritedness that he had shown on his arrival in Taunton, the mannequin-boy of the confession once again parading himself and enjoying the attention of the crowd. He was very chatty at times with de Puebla, like him a scorned outsider confident in his own intelligence. On other days, he did not wish to talk at all.

  His meeting with Soncino and Trevisano on November 26th was a case in point. The ambassadors’ eagerness to
see ‘the false duke who fared so ill’ was not reciprocated. Soncino reported that Perkin mostra havere ingenio pur non li parlassemo, ‘did not seem to care for us to speak to him’. What he disliked, without doubt, was the name by which he was introduced to them and by which they had to address him. He could have done little to avoid it, however, in a room crowded with dignitaries. Perhaps, in the royal fashion, he simply turned to speak to someone else, or bowed his head to make it clear he would give no answer. What he really wanted to do was hide, like a leopard hunted in the woods, or like the savages of Newfoundland who had fled from the explorers that very summer, leaving only a bone needle, ashes on a hearth and the fresh-cut stumps of the trees.

  Soncino could not conclude, from this brief meeting, what he felt about Henry’s captive. He had to think about it, promising to send his views ‘in a few days’, but no more survives than his remark that Perkin seemed to show spirit in adversity. Trevisano’s first word for him, zentil, carried such a wealth of assumptions about manners, bearing, virtue and, particularly, blood that nothing else was needed. The young man appeared to have all of these, yet he was called Perkin: a name from which he gracefully turned his head away. After Trevisano had seen him, he began to call him the Duke of York again.

  In those early days, looking at this strangely elegant captive was something of a court entertainment. To the extent that he was on display, he would have been stared at with particular keenness by people who had known the little Prince Richard and wished to make a comparison. Several old servants of Edward IV still worked about the court, including, most notably, Cardinal Morton in advanced but active old age. Soncino saw a fair amount of him, enough to know that he thought Perkin’s movement ‘puerile’ and ‘had no fear except that the man would escape’. Sitting with the aged cardinal, the Milanese envoy had tried unsuccessfully to draw from him who Perkin’s supporters really were. Morton did not know: the King of Scotland, he thought, and Margaret, but no one else in particular. The English in general did not believe his claim and that, Morton implied, was good enough for him. These remarks were made before Perkin arrived at court, but there is little reason to think they would have altered when Morton saw him. People had always seen what they wished to see in him, or what they believed already.

  Others besides Morton could have tested this boy against the little prince they had known. Oliver King, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had been secretary to Edward IV, was now in fairly regular attendance on Henry. Piers Courteys, who had delivered from the Wardrobe Prince Richard’s silks and satins, continued to do so for the new set of small princes and princesses. (Courteys, who had worked occasionally with Brampton and seems to have been in sanctuary with the little prince at Westminster, had been granted a general pardon both in March 1492 and in February 1495; he was not altogether certain, therefore, that Edward’s second son was dead.) Prince Richard’s attorney, Andrew Dymock, was now Henry’s solicitor, and had been for more than a decade. Katherine, Lady Courtenay, Richard’s youngest sister, was often at court, as was his aunt Elizabeth Plantagenet, the Duchess of Suffolk, and her second son, Edmund de la Pole. No longer at court, but still alive had anyone wanted their opinions on this young man, were Elizabeth d’Arcy, Richard’s nurse, and Dr Argentine, his companion in the Tower. Above all there was Richard’s eldest sister, Queen Elizabeth, keeping a separate and almost unvisitable household from which she issued on ceremonial occasions, with Katherine attending.

  The queen seems to have been a gentle, passive creature. Her world, as seen in her account books, was one of frugally mended gowns, wicker baskets and works of charity. She had little money of her own (her yearly allowance was one-eighth of the king’s), and what she had she often gave away. On Maundy Thursday each year she distributed new shoes to poor women, but her own shoes cost no more than 12d. each and had cheap latten buckles. Her subjects loved her, bringing her cakes, almond butter, apples and flowers, for which she paid them generously. But Ayala in 1498 thought her ‘beloved because she is powerless’, and believed, as many did, that Henry’s formidable mother kept her in subjection. Although Margaret Beaufort showed kindness to her daughter-in-law, she was undoubtedly a stronger character. A citizen of Nottingham once tried to speak to Elizabeth when she visited the city; their pleasant conversation was stopped by ‘that strong whore’, Henry’s mother, and Elizabeth acquiesced.

  Such a woman was not about to question her husband’s version of events. Her appearances with Henry showed her attentive and fond of his company, and he himself was faithful and generally considerate to her. When he was planning war against Scotland in June 1497 she had his half-helmet garnished with jewels, for which he recompensed her; he paid her debts, too, though he expected to be paid back later. Elizabeth most probably accepted that her younger brother, seven years her junior, was dead. This was, after all, the prevailing opinion. She had little reason to think otherwise, or to question Henry’s explanations. No confrontation or repudiation was arranged. Since the young man had agreed to be Perkin, this was unnecessary. It would have been unseemly in any case to recruit the queen for such a purpose, and might have stirred uncertainties that were better left untouched. Nor is there evidence of the slightest contact between them. Presumably, at times and from a distance, they saw each other. An extraordinary link existed, of course, in Katherine, who still believed in her husband and who was daily at Elizabeth’s side. But it is likely that the subject was considered closed and that, in the formality of their dealings with each other, there was no reason or opportunity to raise it.

  He, too, may not have wished to do so. In front of the ambassadors he had seemed ashamed; but perhaps he, like Henry, was also uncertain how to behave. For six years, and probably a good deal longer, he had lived as a prince. Whether or not this had been an act then, it could only be an act now, when he had apparently admitted he was base. Yet it was hard, as Vergil said, ‘to alter the natural disposition of one’s mind, and suddenly to root out the thing therein settled by daily conversation’. In a place that lived by fashion, manners and appearance, he could not put away his elegance. So there was princeliness, but with no purpose, like a velvet coat on a monkey. Henry had such a creature, with a small white-whiskered face and a leather collar; he kept it on a chain, but it escaped once (so the merry story went) and tore up his most important notebook, the one in which the king recorded the characters and demeanours of all those about him. Inside his now-tamed captive, ostensibly no trouble, there may well have been flashes of a similar violence that stemmed from complete humiliation.

  For Christmas that year the court went to Sheen: Henry and Elizabeth, Henry’s mother, and most of the small royal children, gathered for the festivals in the favourite royal retreat. There was much to celebrate: the capture of Perkin, the truce with Scotland, the proxy marriage of Prince Arthur that had now bound England to Spain. ‘They speak of nothing here but of making good cheer,’ wrote Soncino on December 18th. But three days later a fire broke out in the palace, catching a beam and burning for three hours with such ferocity that the ruined areas were never rebuilt. ‘Great substance of Richesse’ – tapestries, hangings, beds, clothes, plate and furniture – was lost. Henry himself estimated the damage at 50,000–60,000 ducats, one-tenth of his annual income. On subsequent days he paid various servants £20, large money in itself, to sift around for jewels in the rubble.

  Fires in palaces were commonplace, and in this case the seasonal feasting and entertaining seemed to continue as usual in the undamaged rooms. But rumours persisted. The blaze had started in the king’s apartments (though Trevisano said the queen’s) at around nine o’clock at night, when fires were usually doused. From what was burned, it seemed to have been centred on the chapel and the king’s Wardrobe, where his robes and furnishings were stored. This was where Perkin slept when he stayed in other palaces, locked in for the night in a dressing room stuffy with tapestries and velvets. The men who dealt with him, those he lived among, were grooms and ushers of the chamber w
hose tasks were to make up the fires, set the torches and candles, strew the rushes or knot-grass on the floors and help make up the beds. Accidents were likely, and the yeomen of the guard were supposed to check every quarter of the night for ‘an adventure of fire’. Less likely, but conceivable, was a candle tilted into a curtain (who would notice?) or a still-glowing brand dropped quietly to the floor.

  The account of the fire that was sent to Milan came from one of Henry’s councillors, who was anxious to play it down. After several paragraphs on the happy state of the kingdom, he admitted that ‘It is true that a fire broke out’. But it was an accident, he stressed, not malice. He said this twice. The king confirmed that he was not unduly troubled, ‘seeing that it was not due to malice’, and let it be known that he would rebuild the chapel ‘all in stone and much finer than before’. Construction of the new palace next door, eventually called Richmond, began as early as January 14th; the king moved on, unconcerned.

  Such carefree briefings had been heard before. In fact, Henry seemed well aware that malice was a possibility. To outside eyes, the source could well have been the strange and unpredictable young man who now haunted his court. Ambassador Trevisano made the link fairly explicitly, as well as letting slip that he thought the blaze deliberate. ‘The Duke of York was thus with the king,’ read his letter of January 11th, ‘and an accident occurred . . . that a fire was set [impiato].’ Possibly.