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MILITARY HISTORY, 1485-1603.
[1496.

was, in fact, signed at Etaples on November 3rd;[1] and on December 17th, the king returned to London. The chief article in the stipulations was the payment to Henry of the sum of £149,000. Another was that the person calling himself Richard, Duke of York, should receive no more shelter and assistance in France.

This person was in reality one Perkin Warbeck, or Osbeck, supposed to be the son of a Jew of Tournay, but by a few believed to be a natural son of Edward IV. He claimed to be the Prince Richard whom Richard III. is generally charged with having caused to be murdered in the Tower; and in 1492 he appeared as such in Cork, and was so well received there that Charles VIII. of France invited him to Paris. He had previously been recognised by the unscrupulous Margaret of Burgundy. But, as has been seen, the Treaty of Etaples drove him out of France; and he went to his patroness Margaret. His presence in Flanders encouraged a dangerous conspiracy in England; but Henry was ruthless in searching it out and stifling it; and when, on July 7th, 1495, the pretender, furnished by the duchess with a few ships and troops, landed some men near Sandwich, the intruders were at once captured by the country people. This miserable attempt led to the hanging of one hundred and sixty persons.

Warbeck returned to his patroness in Flanders; but the conclusion in February, 1496, of the treaty known as "The Great Intercourse," between England and Burgundy, proved that commercial advantages were stronger and weightier than dynastic considerations. The treaty stipulated for his expulsion; and the pretender went, first to Ireland, and then to Scotland. James IV. welcomed him as the lawful King of England, and gave him in marriage Lady Katherine Gordon, a member of the Scots royal house. Twice Warbeck attempted an invasion from the north. By July, 1497,[2] James had grown tired, if not suspicious, of him; and Warbeck, escorted from Scots waters by the celebrated Andrew

  1. 'Fœdera,' xii. 497.
  2. At about that time there was in Scots waters a considerable English force under Robert, Lord Willoughby de Broke, including, besides the king's ships Regent, Mary Fortune, and Sweepstake, the hired vessels, Anthony, of Saltash, Henry, of Bristol, Mary Bird, of Bristol, Mary Tower, of Bristol, Andrew, of Plymouth, Michael, of Dartmouth, and a bark of Penzance (Augm. Off. bk. 316), as well as, possibly, the Margaret Bull, Hermitage, Ellen, of Calais, Christopher, of Calais, Mary Hastings, Peter, Anne, of Malden, John, of Hampton, Gregory Ismay, John Castelyn, and numerous transports. 'Nav. Accts. and Invts.,' 1485-88 and 1495-97, pp. xlv., 84-102, 341-343.