Perkin Warbeck and South West England

Perkin Warbeck, alias Richard Plantagenet (c.1474-1499), imposter and claimant to the English throne, played a minor but instructive part in the history of the South West during the late medieval period. The son of a Tournai artisan, Warbeck’s decade-long imposture as Richard III’s detained nephew, Richard, Duke of York, stirred the ambitions of a host of English noblemen and European leaders. He emerged in Ireland in 1491, to be honoured and protected by the courts of France, Burgundy, the Empire and Scotland, and tried three times to invade England (in 1495, 1496 and 1497), twice eluding capture, before eventually being apprehended at Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, on 3 October 1497. The following article aims to chronicle his final assault and, in particular, the travels that brought the feigned ‘Duc of Yorkis’ into contact with the populace of far South West.