THE STORY OF PERKIN WARBECK

Summary

The career of Perkin Warbeck, whatever may be thought of his pretensions, was certainly in itself so extraordinary that it is no wonder it gave rise, even from the first, to a good many strange and inconsistent statements; and it is a misfortune for English history that the student's chief guide hitherto has been a mere summary of the case, written, of course, with great vigour and clearness, but highly coloured and from very imperfect information, by the great Lord Bacon in his History of Henry the Seventh. Lord Bacon, indeed, discredits the pretensions of the adventurer as most other writers do; but he is clearly smitten with the love of the marvellous, and, as we shall see, he considerably misinterprets in some things the scanty records on which he founds his narrative. But he really seems to have made use of all the evidences available at the time he wrote; and as until our own day there was very little more material by which to form a judgment, historians have been generally content to follow his guidance. It is the object of this paper, however, to trace the career of Warbeck from contemporary documents, most of which have been altogether unknown till the present generation.